Overachiever
by muggleborn.dragon.ryder
Summary: Every second of every day, he's hurting you. And everybody can see it as you lay there in pieces, but you never actually ask to be put back together. And somehow, that's worse. Because you DON'T ask. You just lay there...broken. Modern AU. Rated T for child abuse.
1. The First Extreme

**A/N: Yeah. This was inspired by a book on alcoholism. It's actually really interesting! **

**WARNINGS: Mild abuse, mentions of severe abuse, substance abuse and bullying! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. **

* * *

It began, I guess, shortly after my mom died.

She died in late February. I guess the pain was too much for my dad.

He disappeared one day and didn't come back for a long time. I worried he left me.

When he finally did return, I was downstairs cooking dinner. "Supper's on, Dad!" I called cheerfully to him.

I heard his boots thumping on the carpet and then on the hardwood floor of our kitchen.

I turned to him, a smile on my face, ready to ask him where he'd been. The question died on my lips.

He looked angry. He crossed the room in two strides and asked me what I thought I was doing. I didn't immediately recognize the smell of alcohol on his breath, so for a time I didn't understand why he was so angry. I didn't yet know alcohol made my dad violent and drunkenness made him furious.

He said all sorts of stuff that first night, like how I was a screw-up. He told me I couldn't do anything right. Whether or not I knew it, I took his words to heart. Kids at school bullied me already.

It wasn't like I didn't know how it felt.

I just stood there dumbly when he slapped me on the face. I was speechless, I was shaken.

He'd never done that before.

It escalated quickly after that. He came home drunk at least three times a week, when he bothered to come home at all. Most nights he left me up alone, worrying, until two a.m. when his car finally pulled in the drive.

I learned to hide the bruises from nosy, curious people. I had nothing else to do, nowhere to go, so I threw myself into my schoolwork.

My grades shot up, but I had never been farther down. The A's on my report cards didn't matter; what mattered now were the dark spots of color on my skin. My report cards hardly mattered, because my dad hardly looked at them; I hardly mattered because my dad hardly looked at me.

He'd never even seen the only unwanted gifts he'd ever given me: bruises.

They weren't weighing on his mind, they weren't on his body.

He didn't care about them.

Depending on whether or not my dad was home, my house was either a safe haven or a battlefield.

Even if he wasn't there, the shameful secrets were. Secrets that haunted me with their enormity, no matter how small, physically, they were. The nasty, purpling bruise on my arm, the beer cans littering the trash bags, the utter emptiness of the house and driveway.

By this time, I was fourteen years old and practically raising myself, because my dad sure couldn't. I never resented him for this; instead, I became an overachiever, best grades in my class.

In turn, I became a target for the bullies and the star pupil to my teachers.

"He'll go far, that one," they'd say, but it didn't matter how many times they said it, because I was a screw-up, a freak, useless.

I always knew I was a disaster to him, but I never thought he'd talk about it so openly.

I learned to believe sneering comments from classmates; I learned to hide in the back of the class.

I learned to obey my father without question, to fear loud noises and adults who'd been drinking.

I learned to fear adults in general.

I learned to shut up.

I switched masks day-to-day: smart and funny for proud teachers; an easy target and eager to please for the bullies; obedient and silent for my dad. I perfected each mask.

I was quiet. I was great. I was everyone's perfect, painted doll.


	2. Perfection

**A/N: Chapter 2: Perfection**

**Ok, this was SUPPOSED TO BE A ONE-SHOT I SWEAR! And then a whole bunch of people said they wanted it to be a chapter story and so a chapter story was exactly what they got.**

* * *

I was taught from an early age not to accept help from anyone. My father had taught me that people were cruel, and he and the kids at school enforced this belief so much, it was hard to dispute it.

I was taught from an early age that people were cruel, evil, selfish, despicable.

So when one of the kids at school smacked the books out of my hands, causing them to scatter around me, the belief that it was them, the thought that their bullying had nothing to do with me never crossed my mind.

It had to be me. People were cruel and selfish only to me, because I'd done something to deserve it.  
I was never popular enough never smart enough.

I was never enough. I just wasn't. And that's the way it would always be.

I bent down to pick up my books and, to my intense surprise, a boy with thick black hair and soda bottle glasses stopped by to help me.  
I was so surprised. I expected him to drop them and punch me at any second, but he didn't. He just handed them to me. "Sorry about him," the boy said with a slight eye roll.

"Snotlout can be a real jerk sometimes."

I really didn't know what to say to this, so the first thing that came to my mind was: I didn't need his help. And that's exactly what I said. "Thank you, I didn't need you." I said frostily.

He just looked at me for a second or two, then he shrugged like he'd gotten over my unfriendliness. "Yeah, I know," he replied. "You just looked sad." Then he continued on, but I never forgot his kindness.

I never approached him again and he, in turn, kept his distance from me.  
I didn't approach him because I had been taught early on that people who were nice to me were only out to hurt me, so I shouldn't trust them.  
And people who were mean to me were the people I owed an answer to. If my father came home drunk, shaking a fist and demanding to know something, I learned to answer to him and do it damn quick.

Because if I failed to answer him, I got a beating. If I failed to be nice and polite to the school bullies, I got beaten up after school.

If I failed, if I was anything less than perfect, if I slipped up even once, you got beaten.

And the bruises took weeks to heal, so I got weird looks for wearing long sleeves in early spring.

But it didn't matter if I was perfect, because even if I were, it wasn't like anybody ever looked at me. My dad looked right through me, even though I was perfect. I cooked our meals, I did my homework, I never got marked tardy or absent. I was never out late, I didn't talk back to teachers, I didn't talk back to him.

I got straight stupid A's on all my report cards, I never touched drugs or beer.  
I cleaned our house every morning, I wore a mask to satisfy everyone, and no one ever knew anything. I tried so damn hard to be perfect, because I thought if I was just perfect enough, if I just did enough, he'd finally have to look at me. He wouldn't be able to ignore me anymore.

I kept the secrets well. They were like huge white elephants in our house, secrets that were so embarrassing and shameful that I hated myself for keeping them, but I had to because he was my dad. Because it was the man who'd raised me and everything and he deserved this in return, he deserved for me to keep the secret.

Though they seemed huge when I was alone, they weren't that big of a deal in school.  
If ever there was need for my dad in school (which there rarely ever was - except on things like Parents' Night) I made up all sorts of lies that seemed perfectly believable in the daytime, surrounded by perfectly normal people from perfectly normal families.

I said my dad was sick, I said he'd be out of town, I said he had a business trip that night. Everyone swallowed my lies because out of everything my dad taught me, that was the most important lesson, the one I took to my grave: how to lie.

I had to lie every day. At school, I lied to the teachers, saying things were alright at home. I lied to curious neighbors about the kinds of things they thought they saw, in the dead of night, on the front lawn.

At home, I answered my dad quickly and honestly. I lied to everyone but him, because if I lied to him, I would get a beating like the one when I was twelve...  
I tried not to think about that one too much, though.

I learned to lie to the friend of the family, Gobber, the high school basketball coach, about the stupid things.  
Why didn't I have any friends? Oh, the kids at school are jerks.  
Why don't you smile that much anymore? Smiling isn't necessary.

In truth, my dad taught me and taught me well to distance myself from other kids. If I got too close to them, they'd hurt me. Besides, why would any of them want to get close to me? I was nothing. I was a useless freak.  
I was stupid, I was an idiot. That's what my dad told me. And though my grades told me otherwise, I believed him. I believed him because he was my father and that was another thing he taught me: that every word he told me was true.

He taught me perfection was one way to get his love. I foolishly believed him, so I tried my hardest to be perfect. Though I got good grades and was quiet enough to isolate myself from other kids, it wasn't good enough. I thought maybe it was because of the one 'B' on my report card. Maybe it was because the one time I got home just ten minutes before him, leaving me little to no time to clean the house up.

Maybe it was because I was bullied. Maybe he wanted me to be tougher. Maybe he wanted me to quit whining so much. I tried each of these, to no avail. I can't even tell you how badly it hurt when I came to him each time, hoping for, but certainly not expecting, praise, and getting only rejection.

I also learned to never mention my mother. Whenever she was brought up, my dad flew into this violent rage that scared me. No, scared isn't the right word. Scared was what I normally was of him. He terrified me. That's it. When he was in that violent rage, he positively terrified me. And not the 'you want to run' type terror, the 'you want to hide, run away, but your feet won't move you're so scared' type terror.

I never had a beating as badly as I did the night she was first mentioned in our house.  
It was such a simple thing, Gobber coming over that night. He asked us how we'd been, said he knew it must have been hard for us since...then he cleared his throat significantly, as if to signal some deep personal issue we ought to address ourselves.

What good would that do? I wondered and so I lost I was in my wondering that I hardly noticed when my dad told Gobber to get out. As Gobber stumbled out, quickly, he gave me an apologetic look, although he, of course, had no idea the kind of trouble he'd just caused for me.

My dad turned on me. His face was twisted in rage and, for a moment, I felt this flash of fear in my stomach that warned me to get away to hide, to run upstairs and get under my covers as fast as I could and lie there shaking beneath the blankets.

But I could only stand there, frozen with fear and panic, because, dear God, why did my dad look so angry and why was he approaching me?

Why was he raising his fist? Why was I hitting the kitchen floor? What was I doing wrong? What had I done?

It had been Gobber, I reasoned, Gobber who'd done the wrong, and yet, I got punished for it.

Maybe I deserved to be punished. Maybe it was because Gobber was a good person and I was a bad one.

That had to be it.

For a time, I refused to accept that my dad just didn't love me. When I finally did, when the words finally left his lips, I gasped, literally gasped.

He screamed it that night as he hammered his fists upon my body, as everything in me yelled out, begged for release from the torture, as my head pounded against the kitchen floor and black spots threatened in my vision, he yelled it. "I HATE YOU."

I gasped and when he finally stopped, when he finally calmed down and I was allowed to run upstairs, I locked myself in my bedroom and cried.

I'd never cried after a beating before; I took them with a stiff upper lip because I had to.

But then, I couldn't fool myself into thinking he loved me anymore. So instead of trying to, I set about to try and fix it instead.

Surely, I reasoned, there must be something seriously wrong with me if my own father couldn't even love me.

So for a while, I looked inside myself and came up with these reasons:

I was stupid. Obviously.

I wasn't perfect.

I was bullied.

I was weak.

I was a wimp.

I wasn't the son he wanted.

I talked too much.

I didn't have enough friends.

I didn't have any friends.

I was a loser.

I messed up everything.

I screwed up everything.

I was useless.

I was too good.

I wasn't good enough.

I'd gotten more or less the same messages from my classmates and my dad my whole life. I wrote down the fifteen above things on a sheet of blank notebook paper and pinned it up on my wall. Around that piece, I pinned up other pieces with neat little rows of X's.

Each 'X' meant something I'd done wrong, and I must have covered easily sixty sheets, to say nothing of how my wall looked when I was done.

I tore down my drawings. I was stupid. I was talentless. I was a loser. I didn't deserve the fate of looking at such awful drawings. I hid them under my bed and kept the X's up, to remind myself what a horrible person I was, to do it every day.


	3. Punishment

**A/N: Chapter 3: Punishment **

**Um...okay...here's the next chapter...now to work on 'Shattered' and 'Uncle Gobber'.**

**Thanks for you guys' patience! NO, HICCUP IS NOT GOING TO KILL HIMSELF. At least, not yet. The moment somebody asked me to please allow Hiccup a reprieve, I played with the idea of killing him off, and then somebody brought up the subject of suicide. I was like, 'huh?' I honestly don't see how you guys got the idea. But you guys made me so happy with your reviews and you guys' reviews about suicide confused me so much, I decided to slip something about them in here :) Okay, so warnings below, and enjoy the chapter!**

**WARNINGS: Suicidal thoughts, bullying, mentions of abuse, mentions of substance abuse, angst, depression and low self-esteem **

* * *

I spent my life pushing people away.

Looking back, I think my dad was glad I had no friends. It gave him something else to tear into me about, and it kept me silent.

It kept me silent and made me miserable, two things my dad enjoyed me being.

I don't think he ever really loved me. Like, maybe you think, 'wow, about time you realized that, Hiccup,' but honestly, the thought that he didn't love me had just never occurred to me before. It simply didn't occur to me that my dad didn't love me, not even on the night he told me he hated me.

It just refused to click in my brain. When it finally did, the night of that beating I cried.

The next morning, I woke up and saw the X's. I was reminded of how awful I'd felt last night and how horrible a person I was.

It didn't help that, that day at school, the kids - or some of them, anyway - cornered me and beat me up.

A few of them even told me I should just go kill myself, that the world would be better off without me.

And you know what? I honestly believed them. Suicide had never occurred to me before.

It never occurred to me that I had options.

That night, I went home with the idea. I would think about suicide, seriously think about it, consider it. I wouldn't do anything - yet.

But I had a choice here. I had the option of living - not real popular right then, what with seven more months of nothing but crap from school kids and the rest of my life with my dad - or at least until I was old enough to move out.

And I did. I spent that whole night thinking about it.

When I woke up the next morning, it occurred to me that Dad might need me. He didn't love me, no, certainly not. But he might need me.

So I couldn't kill myself. Yet another wall. Another dead end.

But the bullying was getting worse, although the situation at home was marginally better, because Dad didn't come home for a solid stretch of weeks.

I knew it wasn't my luck that he might have decided to up and leave me - although he should have, because I was a bother and I knew it.  
But the kids at school groaned every day when I walked in the door. "Ugh, there goes the screw-up again," groaned Snotlout, the ringleader of mostly everything that happened to me in school. "He still didn't kill himself? What's keeping him hanging on?"

Though I pretended not to hear their snarky comments they really did hurt me.

They began making me think whatever I did was simply not going to be enough, so I didn't bother to try. I was still the overachiever in school - but I was a failure everywhere else.  
Snotlout told me on a daily basis that I was useless, worthless, nothing.

They began following me home to threaten me, make me feel afraid. I guess, deep down, I was always a little afraid in school, but never because of Snotlout and his cronies. I was always scared because I thought that if I let my mask slip at all, even for just one, crucial second, somebody could get a glimpse of the real me, and that was something that must never happen.

One day, someone did get a glimpse. That boy who helped me pick up my books in the hall that day? My mask slipped - literally this time - in front of him.  
I rolled up my sleeve to do something, reach for something, and the boy saw a dark purple bruise on my arm.

He wanted to know what it was about. I guess I should have reached out then, should have tried to tell someone what was going on in my home.

But I didn't. I made up excuses: I had no one to tell, no one would care, I deserved this, I deserved punishment, I didn't need to tell anyone, I could handle it on my own. I'd been through worse, I knew when it was getting out of hand, I would know when someone needed to be told.

Suffice to say, I made up a lot of excuses. Half of them didn't even make sense, but I used them on myself anyway.

That boy who helped me became concerned. He tried befriending me several times, and it was no one's fault but mine that he eventually stopped trying.

I was cool with him, I was icy cold. I let him know in no uncertain terms that I didn't appreciate him trying to pry into my personal life.

I told him he could get lost.

Looking back on it, I'm ashamed of what I did to that boy. I made him feel like an idiot for wanting to help me, in the same way Snotlout made me feel like an idiot for wanting to fit in.

A new girl came to school a few days after. Her name was Astrid and boy was she something else. Snotlout flirted with her every chance he got and she seemed to know she was too good for him.

I went through a long period of self-hate right about then. As a result, I was left with a lot of unresolved anger and anxiety. I didn't know why I was angry half the time, but I knew I was worried. I was worried, scared, anxious and depressed because I had no one.

I could've leaned on the boy who helped me, if only I had met him halfway. But I scared him off with my anger and big talk, and I was too shy to approach him on my own. If I wanted a friend, he had to approach me first.

And eventually, he did again. I was amazed. What kind of person, I wondered, has the endurance, the courage, the determination, to keep going back, even if they've been hurt before?  
I turned them away, I rejected them, they shouldn't be coming back!

When he sat down with me at lunch that day, he spoke. "You don't seem to like me very much, do you?"

"What would give you that impression?" I asked, watching him open his sack and pull out a turkey sandwich. He barely looked at me as he handed one half to me.

"What's this for?" I asked, looking at it.  
"You didn't bring food today," he said, "and you didn't buy any."

Silence.

"Okay, have you been stalking me or something?" I demanded. "It's no one's business what my eating habits are."

The boy chuckled. "Stalking? No. That's a strong word, dude. Too strong." His green eyes darkened. Then he pushed his can of soda to the middle of the table, leaving me to question why. "Here." He said. "We can share. My name's Toothless, by the way," he added.

I just gave him this 'really?' Look and he flushed, chuckled self-consciously and ran a hand through his thick black hair.

"Okay, my real name's Caden. Everyone just calls me Toothless."

"Why?"

He shrugged and took a bite of his sandwich.

I took a bite from the half he gave me.

We sat there in silence for a few seconds and finally, I reached over to grab my backpack. My sleeve came up a little, revealing dark bruises.

I saw Toothless' eyes flick over to it. "Where'd you get that bruise?"

He acted great at being nonchalant I'd give him that. "You ask a lot of questions don't you?"

"Eh," he shrugged. "Curiosity's a gift."  
"It was curiosity that killed the cat."

Long pause.

When we'd finished eating, I stood and started going away.

"What's your name?" He asked, picking up his stuff.  
"Hiccup," I said. "Of course, if we're going by nicknames, just call me 'the Useless.'"

"Snotlout's awful," he said in a low voice, pitching his bag and soda can in the trash.

"No kidding," I muttered.

He grinned unexpectedly. "So, is Hiccup, like, a nickname or-?"  
"Real name," I shrugged. "My mom told me my name means 'strapping hero' in another language or something..."

Toothless just looked at me and I laughed.

"I know, where were their heads?" I chuckled, catching his look. "But really, when you translate it into Old Norse, it means 'mistake'. My parents did one thing right."

Toothless laughed and we kept going onto our next class.

When I reached my classroom door, he went into the one across from it. I just got through an entire conversation with someone. I didn't stutter. I didn't say something stupid or awkward.

I sat down at my desk, absently doodling while I waited for class to start.  
Before the teacher walked in, somebody passed me a note. The person beside me tapped on me and we handed it to each other below desks.

When I opened it, wondering why the person hadn't just said it to me, I saw the words at the top:

_WORDS TO DESCRIBE HICCUP:_

_Useless__  
Screw-up__  
Runt__  
Weakling__  
Loser__  
Stupid__  
Idiot__  
Wannabe__  
Unpopular__  
Awkward  
Hopeless  
Dumb  
Pathetic  
Weak__  
Moron  
Nerd  
Friendless  
Dork_

The list went on and on and on. At one point, I found myself having to fight tears.  
I couldn't cry in front of these people. What hurt the most was that each word was in different handwriting. More than one person thought this way about me.

I swallowed back the tears that blurred my vision and folded the note up. Whoever had written it was absolutely right. I was all those things. The teacher entered then, forcing me to take my mind off that if I wanted to keep my familiar place at the top of the class.

When class ended, I got up and started walking out, before I felt a meaty hand on my shoulder. Looking around, I saw Snotlout, who I was definitely not in the mood for.

"Hey, little baby Hiccup," he teased. "Like my note? Every word on there is you, you know."  
"Snotlout, just leave me alone," I whispered. "Please."

"Or what?" He hissed, poking me in the shoulder. "Gonna cry like the baby you are?"  
I turned on him, determined to fight back, to make him leave me alone, but instead what came out was a sob. And then the tears did come then and they trickled down my face in warm, salty drops.

Everyone was staring.

"Just leave me ALONE!" I yelled and I ran off then, tears flowing freely now, I hiccupped and sobbed and cried my way out the door.

I wiped my nose on my sleeve and thought of Toothless at lunch. Suddenly, his concern made sense. He was working with Snotlout. He was there to make me think I had a friend. And then, the moment I turned my back, he'd stick a knife in it.

I wouldn't trust him. I wouldn't talk to him. Because even if he was genuine, I deserved to be alone.


	4. Empty Spaces

**A/N: Chapter 4: Empty Spaces**

**Wow. Um ANGST. Hiccup is still fourteen in the story, but this chapter looks back to when he's twelve :) I'm really quite pleased with it and I thought about uploading my first draft *shudders* guys, the first draft was like...terrible, really. Anyway :) thank you for all the reviews! Everyone who reviews gets a...sweaty gym sock xD since other people are like, anyone who reviews gets a cookie! Nope, everyone who reviews gets a gym sock xD no, not really lol, they get cookies :D**

**Warnings: Mild abuse. Mentions of severe abuse and emotional scarring and trauma **

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Our grand piano used to sit in the living room, another huge white elephant. My dad barely looked at it anymore and I thought I knew why.

I remembered hour after hour, my mother's voice, her warm hands guiding my fingers over the keys, teaching me, always teaching me how to play the piano.

I used to play all the time, whether just to lighten the mood or because she wanted to hear me play.

I think Dad thought it was a wimpy talent, but he let me enjoy it, anyway, because it was a talent my mom had as well.

I never played the piano anymore, because it reminded me too much of her. I remember one night, when I was about twelve, when I realized I genuinely wanted to play again. I missed her so much. Playing might bring her back.

So I sat down at the beautiful polished piece of equipment and began playing. It wasn't really much of a tune at first, but with every bar I played, every ivory key my fingers hit, it was like I was screaming silently.

I wasn't aware of time passing. And so it goes that I wasn't aware of hearing a car pull in the drive, hearing the driver's side door slam, hearing unsteady footsteps up the gravel walk. I wasn't aware of the front door opening and slamming shut, I wasn't aware of heavy, loud footsteps on the carpeted living room floor.

I wasn't aware of anything but the bars I played.

I only came back to earth when I felt a hand grab me by the top of the head. He threw me off, onto the carpet, which didn't hurt me physically but it broke my heart that he threw me.

"How dare you!" he yelled. "How dare you play when you killed her!"

I didn't understand what he meant, and as I was about to voice this thought, my dad went rambling on without waiting for a response. "It's your fault she died!"

I think, maybe, if he'd tried telling me that when I was thirteen or maybe fourteen, I would have just shrugged it off.

But grief is grief and I was a child. I heard his harsh, ugly words, spoken by a grieving man and I believed them.

He slapped me on the face. He yelled some more. He beat me until my body cried out for release.

He beat me black and blue and the bruises faded, but he left scars. Continuous scars. Harsh, ugly scars. I hated them. They made me a freak, they marked me out, and they let people know what my dad had done to me, had anybody looked hard enough for them.

I wanted to run away from him, but I couldn't. The beating never really ended; my dad just drove away, and I don't even know where he stayed that night. I should have been scared for him, driving drunk, and for awhile, I was. But eventually even that faded.

The next morning, he found me still laying amidst the wreckage of my life, tears leaving a wet track on my freckled face.

I expected him to hit me, to beat me, to yell at me. I expected to be hated for being weak.

But he didn't. Instead, he picked me up, sat me on the couch and woke me. I think I had nightmares about him, because I flinched back from him and covered my head, waiting for the blows to rain down on me. Instead of beating me, though, he simply went into his bedroom. When he returned, he dragged the piano out and set it out at the end of the driveway, with 'free' written on a sign he taped to the top.

Nobody picked it up that day, but Dad wouldn't shelter it inside the house, although it rained hard throughout the night.

I watched it from my upstairs window, watching the rain drip, like tears, off the ivory keys I had once toyed with, once played so lovingly.

I came alive when I was playing the piano.

In the later years, I convinced myself it was just a fun hobby, but I couldn't deny how happy, how joyous, I felt whenever I played.

And the empty space where the piano used to reside was never filled.

The empty space became the next huge, white elephant in our house.


	5. Sticks and Stones Didn't Break My Bones

**A/N: Chapter 5: Sticks and Stones Didn't Break My Bones**

**Um...yeah...not sure if this title will fit in the chapter doc...thingy :/ Anyway, enjoy a rather short fifth chapter.**

**I recall one of you lovely reviewers wondering if I was going to make this Hictooth or Toothcup. The answer is Hictooth all the way! Yeah! YEAH! HECK YEAH. I ship them to death as friends but I sink them hard as lovers. Like, all the way to the bottom of the ocean hard. Like, feel free to ship 'em yourself. *I* just find them slightly weird. It's your ship, though. Don't let one person (me) sink it ;-)**

* * *

Looking back, I guess it was that that really cemented our friendship. It was stupid, yet simple, but just knowing that Toothless knew how it felt made it easier to take. He offered me friendship. Again. And this time, I thought, 'what if I didn't...turn him away...?'

* * *

_One week earlier_

Snotlout had been really freaking me out that day.

Firstly, he hadn't done anything to me.

Nothing. Not even shoved me in my locker or stuffed my head down a toilet.

I kept waiting for the blow to fall, thinking maybe it'd be like it was in seventh grade at the end of the year when they beat me with baseball bats.

But no – nothing happened, nothing whatsoever and I was starting to go a little crazy, at least until he approached me in the hall that day.

"Hey, Hiccup," he greeted me.

No 'Hey, Useless.' No threats. No smirk. Exactly what was going on?

"Hey, I'm having a party on Friday night. It's a little Halloween thing; you can come in costume or just dressed as yourself. Either way is fine."

"Snotlout," I demanded, crossing my arms, unable to keep silent any longer, "exactly what is going on? You treat me like dirt, then invite me to some party? How stupid do you think I am?"

He went a little red. "I looked back on these past few years, Hiccup, and I realized I haven't exactly been the greatest guy to you."

I coughed to hide a sarcastic laugh.

"Okay," he amended, raising his eyebrows, "I've been horrible to you. I want to set things right. I'm sorry. I'm hoping you'll forgive me. The party isn't really that big a deal, I just wanted you to come." He shrugged. "I thought you might enjoy it."

"Wow." I blinked and smiled. "Th-thanks. I don't think I can come to the party, though, my dad—

Then I stopped myself in my tracks, freezing in my panic as I realized what I had almost said.

"Oh, it's fine," he said, waving it away. "Honest. It really isn't that big a deal."

"Thanks, though," I told him.

I was actually happy for about two point five seconds of that day. Then I got home. Dad was gone (thankfully) so I had the house to myself. My eyes drifted, again, to the empty space where the piano used to reside. I missed playing it a lot.

I shrugged it off and got started on my homework.

About an hour or so after I was done, I heard the doorbell ring. Stretching, figuring it was something for my dad, I opened the door and peered out. There was no one there. I opened the screen door and stepped outside, into the biting October wind. I shivered, pulling my jacket closer around me. Maybe it was that twelve year old who liked to play Ding-Dong Ditch as late as his parents allowed (which was unimaginably late, by the way – you have no idea how startling it is to be woken by the sound of the doorbell at two o' clock in the morning).

"Okay. Whoever did this, it wasn't funny," I muttered to myself, turning to go back inside.

Then I heard the 'chink' of stone on concrete. Looking down, I saw a little red-veined rock lying there, perfectly still. Apparently Ding Dong Ditch kid decided to do something a little different this time. "Ugh." I said, looking around to see if I could catch sight of him.

Soon, a few more stones came flying at my face. With a yelp, I covered my head with my arms (years of practice from living with dad) and managed to avoid the majority of the stones. Obviously, a few pinged painfully on my wrist, but for the most part, I was fine.

I heard familiar laughter from behind a bush in the neighbor's yard. Then the leaves rustled and Snotlout jumped out, clutching a large handful of rocks, which he proceeded to throw at me.

Tuffnut Thorston soon appeared beside him and began hurling them, too.

They hit my body hard, like hail, and I covered my head in an attempt to protect myself. Finally, when they stopped to pick up more ammo from the driveway, I ripped open the screen door and threw myself inside, trying to ignore their jeers from the other side of the frigid glass.

"Look!" Tuffnut sneered. "The Useless in his natural habitat!"

"Silly, his natural habitat would be failing!"

I closed the front door. They were absolutely right.

* * *

_One week later_

I avoided everyone for the next week, but on Friday, Toothless sat down right beside me in class and handed me a note.

_I heard about what Snotface did. That was low, man._

His spiky black writing spoke empty words of comfort.

He didn't look at me, adjusting his Coke bottle glasses.

_Yeah and what else is new? _I wrote back.

He read it and sighed quietly to himself. I watched him pick up his pencil and scribble back to me.

"You know why they call me Toothless?" he whispered to me.

I shook my head.

He kicked the note under his desk, tossing it into the wire wastebasket right behind us. "Because my real name is Caden. It means 'fighter'. As I said before. Some kids at school thought it would be real funny if they nicknamed me 'Toothless' because, as they said I was tough as a flightless, toothless dragon with half a tail."

"That's dumb," I whispered to him.

Astrid, the new girl, looked back and glared at us, putting a finger over her lips. Then she turned back around, shook out her long, pale blonde hair and went back to staring resolutely at the teacher.

He wrote on the piece of paper again. _Try telling that to them._

Once classes were over and I was headed home, I heard a voice say, "Hey, Useless!"

"Alright, Snotlout," I muttered to myself. "This better be great because I am seriously not in the mood…"

"Like my visit last night?"

"OH, YOU SHUT UP, SNOTLOUT!"

I looked around, because the person yelling most certainly wasn't me.

I saw Toothless glaring at him, arms crossed, brows drawn down. "Give him a break! And I will have you know my father's a cop! Any more late night 'visits' to Hiccup's house and I'll report you, Jorgenson! Now get the hell out of here!"

Snotlout scowled and sneered, but ran off.

"Wow. Thanks," I murmured quietly, not sure how to take what he'd just done for me.

"Don't thank me," Toothless muttered. "I was barely restraining myself from ripping that guy's fat _head_ off."

I reached for him, just in case he decided to go do just that and I had to hold him back.

He chuckled quietly. "Oh, don't worry. I'm not going to now."

"Is your father really a cop or are you lying about that, too?"

"No." he whispered. "He was a cop."

"Was? I thought—

"He's dead, alright?" snapped Toothless. I saw his shoulders tense up just before he whipped back around to face me. "Now listen. Any of those bozos give you trouble, they answer to me, alright? I'll tell 'em all my dad's a cop—

"Toothless." I interrupted quietly. "Don't. Please. I don't want to cause trouble—

"You're so perfect, aren't you?" he snapped. "Maybe you're thinking if you let 'em treat you like shit, it'll make 'em back down. Well, it won't. It'll just make it worse and worse and _worse_. Take it from somebody who knows."

He started to walk away.

"Toothless?" I called.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"Anytime, Hiccup." Then he disappeared behind the school.

"_He's dead, alright?" _

"_Take it from somebody who knows."_

One thing was clear: I sure as hell didn't know Toothless like I thought I did. And he didn't know me.


	6. Alone

**A/N: Chapter 6: Alone**

**Um...yeah. This chapter was inspired by me seeing a payphone. Just a payphone. From there, I worked out this chapter xD yes, I know I'm weird xD**

* * *

I guess I wasn't careful enough.

I wasn't watchful enough.

I should have known this would happen.

I was sitting on the steps after school, shoving my books into my backpack. I managed to zip it up again and swing it onto my shoulder, before feeling it fall.

As I bent to retrieve it, I felt a sudden, sharp pain in the small of my back and I crumpled.

Things happened quickly then.

I was shoved into a car that smelled of alcohol, the familiar scent that made my stomach clench in fear.

It also smelled like something else, something sweeter.

I was blindfolded, a leather seat beneath me, an arm rest digging into my back.

I could feel the floor shaking beneath me as I waited for the car ride to end. Who had me? Where was I being taken? The questions kept coming at me, but I didn't want them answered, so I shoved them out of my brain and focused on not breathing too deeply, because if the familiar smell of alcohol stung my nose again, I was going to hyperventilate.

Here, in this little car, I had no escape.

I clenched my hands into fists, nails digging into my palms as I waited.

And finally, the car did stop and I felt asphalt beneath my hands and cheeks as I was shoved out onto cold ground.

I pulled my too-small brown jacket closer to me as I heard footsteps around me. Then I felt somebody punching me, hard, in the back.

I winced and drew a quick breath so I wouldn't cry out.

You get hurt, you suck it up, you deal with it; you don't whimper or yell.

I swallowed as whoever had punched me rested a sneaker on my back. "Nice performance for us. Do you do that on demand?"

I could barely move, much less talk back. And I learned not to talk back. I merely drew another quick, ragged breath, because I knew that voice anywhere.

_Snotlout._

"Maybe this time, you'll finally learn to leave the toothless dragon out of this," snarled Snotlout, and then I felt a sharp kick to my gut.

I struggled just to breathe, reminding myself that after awhile, he always got bored of taunting and humiliating me. There's only so much embarrassment and tears a bully likes to draw from a victim; once he gets it, it becomes boring.

_I should have become boring._

I closed my eyes, though I was still blindfolded, so I guess it didn't really matter.

Another kick. A few punches. A few thousand threats here and there.

_I'm sorry for whatever I did. _

My thoughts became more jumbled.

_Was my mask not right? _

_No, my mask's always right…_

_Did I do something wrong? _

_What did I do? _

I waited for the kicks, punches and belittling to stop. When it did, it turned out they weren't done.

They dragged me back in the car.

The real torture throughout it all was being blind. With the blackness covering my eyes, I couldn't tell where anything was. Living with my dad for fourteen years has made me incredibly sensitive to and hyperaware of my surroundings and if I can't see them, I climb the walls.

My thoughts ended when they threw me onto the asphalt. I felt something warm and wet streaking down my face and I wondered vaguely what it was before things started going black and I faded into welcoming darkness, away from the pain of Snotlout's kicks.

* * *

When I awoke, I heard nothing. No voices. I tentatively undid the blindfold, fumbling clumsily with the string for several long minutes, shivering from the bone-chilling cold.

I just couldn't get warm.

When I finally managed to undo the blindfold, I glanced up and saw the sun setting behind the trees, the sky going purple.

I took a steadying breath to keep the fear from roiling in, but all that was destroyed with my next thought:

_Shit._

_Dad's going to kill me if he's home._

Being my dad, he spent ninety percent of his money on alcohol, meaning we rarely ever had things we needed; the jacket I wore being a fine example. I'd outgrown it two years ago but I didn't have the money to replace it.

Hence, I didn't have a phone.

Luckily, phones were overrated and completely unnecessary, but this meant there was no way out of my situation.

When I looked around, I realized I was in the middle of nowhere.

So I got up and started walking, fighting tears while I searched for civilization, because if I broke down, my mask would slip.

Even here, in the middle of nowhere, I had to be perfect.

The first building I found was a rest area and by that time, night had fallen.

A cold wind kept blowing past and my shivering was getting worse as I spotted the payphone.

I dodged the two old men laughing throatily and smoking.

I flinched away from the middle-aged drunk man wolf-whistling at a dark-haired teenage girl.

I saw the girl walking hurriedly away from the man, throwing dark, suspicious glances over one shoulder and I felt the tears building up again.

I didn't know if I could fight them.

_She knows what it feels like…to be scared._

I swallowed back the tears and picked up the receiver and before I even began dialing, it hit me: I had no one.

Dad might not be home yet, and even if he was, he wouldn't come.

And nobody was there.

Nobody. I didn't know anyone who would pick me up.

Maybe Gobber would, but I didn't even have his number or the knowledge of where I was, both of which are kind of necessary for this sort of thing.

I slowly placed the receiver back down and sat down on the sidewalk. I was done.

I had nowhere else to go.

I had no one.

I was alone.

_You are alone, boy, _the stars seemed to say. _You were a mistake and you'll die alone here. On this sidewalk._

I hugged my knees up to my chest as the teenage girl who had been looking darkly over her shoulder cleared out in a silver car.

I listened to the drunken man singing off-key, the smokers laughing it up.

I sat there as they eventually stumbled away as well.

Then I felt a light tap on my head.

I looked up quickly, scared. "Y-yes, sir?"

It was the drunken man. I swallowed, feeling my spine stiffen involuntarily, my hands clenching into fists, my knees going rigid. My dad taught me to be terrified of adults who drank.

"Spare me some change?" he asked, holding out a dirty hand. "Help me get a drink?"

_I don't think you need any more alcohol in your system._

"I-I'm sorry," I stuttered. "I don't have any money."

He stumbled away, muttering a swear word at no one.

When he was gone, I relaxed a little again, curling up more comfortably on the sidewalk. I listened to the wind whistling around me and shut my eyes, shifting my weight. This wasn't so bad, really. I could deal with my dad tomorrow; for now, I had a perfectly good sidewalk to sleep on. I could find my way home tomorrow.

And Dad was normally gone on weekends.

Feeling safe from this piece of information, I settled back down and shut my eyes, the light breeze playing with my hair, making it tickle the tops of my ears.

_Things aren't so bad, really…Dad won't even know…you'll come back and you'll be perfect…he won't hit you, Hiccup…but you're tired, aren't you? Go to sleep…_


	7. Buried

**A/N: Chapter 7: Buried**

**Um, sorry about this little mix-up in the last chapter. I uploaded this originally as 'Lies' and decided I didn't like it. The problem with this fanfiction is I'm a little like Hiccup. Everything has to be PERFECT otherwise, I won't like it. I'm a real perfectionist when it comes to fanfictions I'm really proud of, like this one. I'm really pleased with this chapter, even if it's two thousand words. **

* * *

I don't think it's possible to lower the white flag once it's already been raised.  
The enemy's already seen it, and so they know my weakness. They know I have a pretty high tolerance for physical pain, but that simple words like 'freak' or 'screw-up' or 'runt' are capable of tearing me apart.

They don't see what happens on the inside. All they see is me, standing on a deserted battlefield, alone, my weapon bent and broken and pointing at nothing. They see a wounded soldier ready to quit, yet they don't really know the reasons why.

They think they broke him down.

But it was something on the inside that broke him down, something much bigger and stronger than they are.  
They'll never know it was never their kicks or taunts or punches that brought me here. They'll never know they didn't bend my gun like it was a cheap plastic play toy.  
They'll think they did it.

And I won't try to tell them otherwise.

On Monday, when they see me, they might catch a glimpse of a fading bruise on my cheek, or they might notice that I keep my eyes down, my head down, my fingers tight on my backpack's wearing straps.  
My backpack is the only thing that hasn't left me yet and even it's showing the strain in its fraying black strings.

I show the strain in the way I hold my book tight, as if its ivory pages can hold me together, if I just squeeze it hard enough.

I show the strain in the way that every report card has that one A minus that I'm sure stands between me and my father, the next big, ugly white elephant: imperfection.

I show the strain in the way that I pull this too-small jacket of mine down lower over my wrists, hoping to disguise bruises as a cold wind.

They don't know that when they shove me in the back, my gasp of pain isn't because they hurt me, it's because the spot they just pushed is the spot my father punched on Saturday morning because I wasn't home on Friday.

They don't know I sat up until three a.m. on Saturday, unable to sleep because of the pain in my body mixed with the pain in my heart.

They don't know that I watched the rain drip off my window in short little bursts, and they'll never know how many X's I added to my wall that night.

Nobody will ever know what triggered my surrender, what made me raise up the white flag that I once swore I'd never hold.

Nobody will ever know.

And if nobody ever knows anything…than what's the point?

On Monday morning, Toothless caught up with me at lunch, perfectly happy to keep sitting with the useless loser, no matter how many times I told him he was just asking for Snotlout's hatred.

I stared at the bright green, peeling tabletop as if it held all the secrets of the universe until I heard the rough sliding of a paper bag across a wooden surface.

Looking up, I saw Toothless, once again, tentatively pushing half his sandwich towards me.

I glared at him, hoping he'd take the hint. "Toothless, you seriously need to stop—

"Stop what?" he demanded, eyes raking over me disapprovingly. "Single-handedly feeding you? You're right, maybe I should." He rolled his dark green eyes and began eating.

I exhaled slowly, pushing the food back towards him. "Thank you, but I'm not hungry."

My stomach growled suddenly, taking away all further arguments.

Toothless just raised an eyebrow, handing me back the sandwich half. "I only give it to you because you never bring food and you never buy any. Just…thought you had the eating habits of a normal person."

_Well, no, I don't. In fact, we rarely have enough money to last us for a week of food. _

The angry thought surprised me. Normally, I was calm.

I swallowed and my lips twitched, threatening a smile as I mulled over his words. I didn't even know if Dad would leave me enough money to go buy food some days. _The irony._

"Yeah, well, that's why I don't take your food," I replied. "For one, I'm fine without it. For another, I'm trying not to be freaked out here that you know my _eating habits."_

Toothless sighed. "When you have to navigate a school full of losers," he waved a hand to indicate Snotlout's table, causing Snotlout to look up at us and flip me the bird, "you learn to recognize the people who have enough brain cells to carry on a decent conversation. You're one of those people, I could tell just by looking at you."

I gave a sarcastic little laugh. "Yeah. You're only talking to the stupidest person in the entire school."

Toothless rolled his eyes. "That's the stupidest person in the entire school," he replied, pointing at Snotlout again. "If you think you're stupider than him, you really are dumb. At least you know words bigger than 'the'."

My lips twitched again. "Yeah. Maybe."

Toothless stared hard at the tabletop and spoke softly. "Can't I just…_please_…rip that guy's face off?"

"Toothless." I chastised. "No."

Then a thought struck me. "Why would you want to, anyway?"

He sighed, rolling his eyes and leaning way back on the bench. "Problem is, Hiccup, you know how last Friday, I told you to take it from someone who knows? Well…I do know. Snotlout's just an overgrown jerk who's used to pushing people off the swings and into the mud. I'm just waiting for him to realize we're not in kindergarten."

"He…does stuff to you, too?"

Toothless snorted. "Used to. I…uh…" he rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. "I talked to my uncle and asked him what to do. He told me to stand up for myself, otherwise it'd never stop, it'd just get worse and worse. I did what he suggested, and Snotlout left me alone."

His eyes slid to me, watching me curiously. "That's why I don't understand why you don't stand up for yourself."

I didn't look up from the tabletop again. "Does it matter?"

"Course it does," he countered. "The more people who show Snotlout the world isn't his oyster, the better. Maybe someday he'll realize he can't walk all over people. I want to see his face the day he gets that rude awakening."

I pulled my sleeves down lower over my wrists, questions living and dying in my throat, swirling around in my mind. It made sense now why Toothless acted so…protective of me. He knew what I was going through.

_Except you don't know me. Not really. No one knows me._

But at least now I knew I didn't have to be scared of him.

_Or so you think._

Then again, maybe that irritating little voice in the back of my head had a point. Maybe I did have to be scared. Because Toothless obviously knew things about me, like that I didn't ever eat lunch because I never wanted to stay in the house long enough to pack anything, not with my dad hung over in his bedroom. He didn't understand.

No one understood.

No one would ever understand why I had to keep my walls so far up, why it hurt so much, knowing nobody would ever try to break them down.

I just wanted somebody to care.

And I didn't want it to be just anybody caring; I wanted my dad to care. If only I could be perfect for him, if only I could be good enough, maybe I would finally see love and pride in his eyes and maybe he'd forgive me for not being perfect enough before.

Maybe he could forgive me for having reasons for all those X's on my walls, maybe he wouldn't mind them so much if I did something really great, if I was just good enough.

Maybe, just maybe, he might love me.

Suddenly, a voice came from above us. "Hi. Mind if I join you?"

The voice sounded irritated and embarrassed and when I looked up, I saw it was Astrid, the new girl, holding a tray and glaring down at me.

I dropped my head and shrugged. "Sure. Whatever you want."

Toothless nodded, scooting over so she had a place to sit. She thumped her tray down on the table, still looking incredibly pissed off, so Toothless said tentatively, "You look pretty mad, gorgeous. Anything you want to talk about?"

Astrid glared at him. "Listen, I've just been through Snotlout, so don't mess with me. Oh, and call me gorgeous and I knock out your teeth."

I could feel a smile spreading over my face and it grew into a fully-fledged chuckle. The second time in one lunch period, I thought, correctly reading the look of surprise on Toothless' face at the sound of my laughter.

Astrid's face was flushed, but when she heard my laugh, a smile crept over her own face and Toothless was smiling, too.

"Did you guys see that English test today?" Astrid asked and Toothless nodded. They both groaned loudly and began talking.

"I swear, Mr. Calder hates me," Toothless said. "He's always glaring at me whenever he lectures, like he thinks I'm personally responsible for all the whispering and note-passing in that class! It's like, dude, I can NOT control your students! That's your job!"

Astrid covered her mouth with her hand and kept laughing, then stopped, starting on another aspect of school with Toothless.

I stayed quiet, realizing I was actually nibbling on the sandwich Toothless had offered me.

I quickly stopped, remembering that sooner or later, he'd leave me and stop giving me his food. If my body got too used to eating lunch, the hunger would be worse, harder to ignore.

I sighed and set it down, checking the clock on the wall above us for the time. Lunch was nearly over.

"So, what's your next class, hot stuff?" Toothless asked, eyeing Astrid. I rolled my eyes and started to stand.

"I'm warning you— Astrid began, but Toothless interrupted.

"Oh, right. Just been through Snotlout. Sorry. Forgot." Then he added, "So, why'd you join our humble little table, then, huh?"

Astrid allowed a smile to pass over her face and I realized she was actually really pretty when she smiled. "My best friend is out sick today and without her, there's no intelligent life at that table." She waved her hand over to Snotlout's table where Tuffnut Thorston and Fishlegs Ingerman sat. "Well…except maybe Fishlegs," she allowed, then added, "And my next class is Algebra, what's yours?"

"Ugh. Biology." Toothless rolled his eyes, as if he couldn't imagine anything worse. I was busily trying not to be disgusted by his flirting attempts as I grabbed up my wearing backpack and shouldered it, beginning to walk away from them.

I hated meeting new people and Astrid was probably the worst in a long time. It had stopped being about trying to hide things – I'd gotten good enough at that that I had almost nothing to fear from classmates.

But I liked aloneness, although it grew lonely at times, because loneliness was infinitely better than being hurt. I enjoyed the solitude, because it was all I'd ever known and you can't miss what you never had, so I never wished for friends.

But there was another reason that would keep me confined to the lonely four walls of my house, a reason past my dad that would most likely still be there even if my dad was okay with me having friends. Even if I wasn't terrified that I'd slip up and say something about Dad, I was terrified because I was around people. If I said the wrong thing or did something dumb, the bullies at school would most likely drop it after a few days, but the bullies in my head were far meaner and they remembered everything.

I was too shy to enjoy meeting people. I preferred the quiet of the concrete steps in front of the school during lunch, I preferred cliques like the skaters, whose conversations didn't always have to involve talking.

I had hated meeting Astrid. It wasn't her fault at all. She was a nice girl, one of those straight-A students with a bright future and voted "Most Likely to Succeed" with 'leadership skills' down on her permanent records.

Let's face it, she was one of those perfect kids. I had genuinely liked her spunky comment of 'I'll knock out your teeth' but I couldn't enjoy it, because my mask was constantly changing. I didn't know her well enough to know what kind of things she wanted to hear, either.

Did she want me to be the overachiever, the eager to please or did she expect the same silent obedience my dad did?

I couldn't be around people like her. Because the voice in my head told me people like her expected the real me. And I'd buried that person so deep, and fed everyone around me so many lies so often now that I really wasn't sure who the real me was anymore.


	8. If Only I Could Disappear

**A/N: Chapter 8: If Only I Could Disappear**

**Wow! Thank you all for your reviews! I fell asleep last night with sixty-eight and woke up with seventy-eight! :) Also, did anyone enjoy the cover pic? *sheepish smile* I can't help it, I'm so proud of it and I made it myself! :) Like, obviously, the picture is from Dreamworks, but I added the black-and-white effect and the words and crap. **

**I'm sorry this chapter's so short. I promise chapter ten will be longer. I would say chapter nine, but chapter ten feels like the chapter that's gonna end it all. I'll try not to rush anything, but I feel this climax building in the story and it fills me with excitement and it's hard to contain. If the story starts getting sloppy, let me know.**

**This is another flashback to when he's ten, like in Chapter 4, "Empty Spaces", but he's still fourteen in this story. I have no idea where this idea came from. My head canon is that Snotlout has bullied Hiccup since he was seven and almost all my head canons (like that Stoick is a violent drunk) are coming into play in this story :)**

**Also, NO! I forgot to say this in Chapter 6 and 7, but NO! This is NOT slash! It's not going to become it, and it most likely won't even be romantic! Toothless hitting on Astrid is like, the end of the romance! The relentless Hiccstrid shipper in me really wants to make them end up together, but that'd be too...perfect, you know? If Hiccup wants a healthy relationship in which he can truly love the girl, he's going to have to learn how to love himself first, because he has this big disgust for himself and it's so bad he hates stuff like looking in mirrors because he hates himself, because his dad made him hate himself. He needs to heal and learn to love himself before he can love anyone else.**

* * *

I remember in fifth grade, when I was ten, we had a spelling bee.

I was excited because I was finally doing something right for once and I hadn't yet been disqualified.

When it was just Snotlout, Fishlegs and I left, the teacher asked Snotlout to spell the word 'useless'.

It was such a simple word and what Snotlout did next is almost impossible to describe as being terribly hurtful but I was only ten years old, the bullying was getting worse and I was still juggling everything going on in my home. As a result, it hit me like a slap in the face and it's stuck with me ever since.

Snotlout said, "Useless. H-I-C-C-U-P. Useless."

I drew back, horrified and shocked. Fishlegs just sent me this apologetic 'this is what happens when you get on Snotlout's bad side' look.

I could feel tears building up in my eyes and I could only stare at Snotlout. I expected some sort of reaction from my teacher. I expected her to say something. I expected Snotlout to be sent to the principal's office.

But instead, Ms. Jenkins merely said, "Disqualified, Jorgenson."

She disqualified him for purposely misspelling 'useless'. For replacing it with my name. She didn't do anything. All she did was disqualify him. She didn't acknowledge that anything hurtful had happened at all.

I stood there dumbly, mouth opening and closing as no sound came out.

Ms. Jenkins rounded on me. She asked me to spell 'recital'.

I swallowed. "I'd like to go back to my seat, if that's okay."

She looked confused, but she wasn't an uncompassionate or mean-spirited teacher, just a bystander. She made me stay, so I purposely misspelled it, too and Snotlout tripped me in the walk back to my seat.

He smirked and whispered, "Gonna cry, little baby Hiccup?"

Even at ten years old, I knew wearing your heart on your sleeve was a bad idea. Even before Mom had died, I'd known that. Dad had beaten that into my head long before she'd died.

I swallowed and pushed myself to a standing position, hearing Tuffnut and Snotlout snickering.

"That will do," Ms. Jenkins said sharply to the whisperers as she awarded Fishlegs for winning.

I don't know why the memory came back to me so strongly as I sat in my math class, waiting for the class to end so I could go back to my house and straighten it up and put dinner on, hoping that my dad would come home to see his little overachiever working to earn his love.

I clenched my hands into fists, wanting to shrink down, to make myself smaller, hoping to disappear right there in my seat.

Everything would be better if only I could disappear.

The bell rang loudly, then, scaring me out of my thoughts.

Loud noises always scared me now.

"Class dismissed," the teacher said quietly and as one, the students rose up and walked forward, to our next classes, splitting up one by one, until it was just me, because even in a crowd of people I was completely, totally alone.


	9. Manners

**A/N: Chapter 9: Manners**

**What? I told you it was going to be short. Okay, okay, all crap aside, I really am trying to make things longer. But in my defense, Chapter 7 was two thousand words. I know Chapter 8 was only five hundred and this one's barely that, but I considered putting a school scene in here and decided against it. I feel like sometimes, I focus so much on the bullying in his school and how wrong the bullying is that I forget that the other thing I want readers to take home is that if they're being abused, they are not alone and that they should most definitely tell someone. And for those people who aren't abused or haven't ever been, just remember, child abuse is wrong. No matter what.**

* * *

I learned manners when I was younger.

"Please."

"Thank you."

"Please don't hit me anymore, Dad."

"Thank you for not coming home tonight just to tell me I'm not good enough."

"Please don't ignore me."

"Thank you for not tearing me down."

It was the way I was taught, that I should be grateful not when someone was nice to me, but just when they refrained from being mean.

I don't think that before Toothless and Astrid, I'd ever met anyone who actually was nice to me from the start.

But then again, if my paranoia was to be believed, they were only doing it to hurt me. I thought about these things as I sat at the kitchen table, one eye on my math homework and the other on the stove, focused half on the popping, hissing sounds coming from the stove eyes and half focused on the long string of A = 6 and stuff like that.

Until the door opened.

When the front door creaks open and my father steps into the house, the kitchen stops being a warm, cozy place where I can do my homework without fear of being called a nerd or a geek.

It becomes a battlefield again, a place where I have to adjust my mask before my dad sees that I was giving being perfect another fruitless try.

I would never be perfect.

But I needed my dad to love me. So I tried to be, just for him.

I felt my hands clenching into hard fists as my dad's boots made quiet, barely audible thumps on our carpet in the living room. Moving into the kitchen, his footsteps became audible and with each step he took, I waited for him to reach me, to yell at me.

When he did reach me, he sat down in the chair beside me. He had a can with him and his breath had a faint smell of alcohol. So faint that I wondered if he was sick or not.

I waited for him to speak, for him to start yelling. When he didn't, I just stared at him, not in a rude way but in an 'I'm waiting for you to speak' kind of way.

He slowly rose up from the table and said, "Let's not have another scene like we did on Saturday, huh? I don't like disciplining you."

I could feel a shiver crawling up my spine as I heard the threat clear in his voice. I kept my eyes on my paper as I nodded. "I promise. I won't do it again."

_Please don't beat me, Daddy._

I held my breath as he slowly stood and walked away. I heard him pause, shedding his boots and coat. Then his bedroom door opened and everything was peaceful again and supper was cooking and all was peaceful again.

And I was his little overachiever still, the golden boy who was left behind.

_No. _

_Please. _

_Thank you._


	10. Reluctance

**A/N: Chapter 10: Reluctance**

**HI. This is my newest chapter. Didn't I tell you it'd be long? *grin* And here's some mild Hiccup/Astrid for all the shippers out there and to the non-shippers, here's some friendship fluff. **

* * *

I waited for the teacher to call my name, sitting at my desk. Hoping I wouldn't get paired with Snotlout, I listened to the names called out.

"Snotlout Jorgenson and Tuffnut Thorston!"

"Yes!" Astrid high-fived the girl in the desk beside her.

"My brother totally deserves him," the girl snorted.

Looking at her, I saw she was a pretty girl who resembled a female version of her brother, cupping her cheek in one hand.

"Astrid Hofferson and Hiccup Haddock!" The teacher continued.

Astrid and I exchanged looks. She shrugged, so I did, too.

She smiled a little and fiddled with the band keeping her braid in place. "Well, at least you're better than Snotlout."

"Flattered," I whispered sarcastically and she smiled again.

It had been a week since that day she'd sat with us at lunch and the girl beside her, her best friend, had been out sick for the rest of the week.

Astrid had sat with us at our table every day since, but seeing as her friend was back now, I expected the arrangement to stop.

Clearly, the small friendship she'd managed to make with Toothless stretched to me, because I had been nowhere near friendly to her.

We were in homeroom and the teacher was making us do one of her assignments to "break the ice". We might be freshmen, but we've been in this school since September. Some of us have broken the ice and between certain students, it's getting a little too thin.

When the teacher finished reading out the names, Astrid was the one to go up to her desk and ask for the index cards.

"Okay, she said the assignment was simple," Astrid said, handing me half the stack and keeping the other half for herself. She picked up her pencil, swiped her long bangs out of her face and began scribbling. "Now, this assignment's dumb, but don't laugh."

I shrugged, secretly thinking it was kind of cool. We were supposed to write down a word or a phrase and read it out to our partner. The partner was then supposed to say the first word that jumped to mind from the word or phrase. It seemed simple enough and if we did it right, it could even be fun.

I scribbled random words: "pencil" "school" and "work" were just three.

After about fifteen minutes of this, Ms. Halloway, the teacher, clapped her hands together. "Alright, class. Put down your pencils, turn to your partner and read out your first note card."

Astrid let her pencil drop and rifled through her stack until she found the first. "My turn or your turn first?"

"Uh…yours," I replied, so she nodded and waited while I found my own stack.

"Rain," I tried.

"Wet," she replied.

I nodded and set the card aside, waiting for her.

"Alone," she read.

"Safe." The word jumped out of my mouth. It was the truth. Alone meant safe, because there were no bullies or drunken fathers to hurt you. To tell you that you weren't good enough. To shove that fact in your face day after day.

"Book," I said.

"School."

"Um…okay…" she shuffled her cards. "Fun."

"Children."

"Short," I said.

"You," she replied.

"Oh, that's nice," I huffed. "I'm not THAT short."

"Yeah, you are," she said. "I'm five-foot-five, Hiccup, and you're like…a foot shorter."

"I am not!"

"Really, then how tall are you?"

"I choose not to reveal this," I argued.

"Really, c'mon, how tall are you?"

"Okay, fine! Just don't laugh! In fact, what is said at this desk stays at this desk."

"Alright, fine. Whatever. Don't be a girl about it, just say it."

"I'm five one."

There was nothing for a few seconds between us but the sound of her laughter and then, seconds later, choked giggles and lots of ribbing.

"See, you can't keep a promise," I told her, but I was fighting not to laugh, too. I shuffled my cards and said, "Princess."

"Jasmine."

"What?"

"You know, from Aladdin. The Disney movie?"

"Never seen it."

She gasped theatrically, but choked over the air doing so. I fought to keep the smile off my face as she coughed and pushed her hair out of her face.

"I believe that's called karma."

"Oh, shut up, Haddock. And that's not fair, you did two right in a row."

"Yeah, because you wouldn't stop laughing," I accused.

One of the people in the desk behind mine shushed us and replied to his partner, "Blood."

I looked back at Astrid and shrugged. "Sorry about that. Your turn."

"Green." She read out.

"Jealousy," I replied.

"Sword," I said.

"Vikings," she said in response.

I gave her a weird look. "How do you get 'Viking' out of 'sword'?"

"Vikings used swords, right?"

"Yeeeeessss…" I replied slowly. "But that's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?"

"Look, my mind is my mind," she huffed. "Kind of like how your height is five-foot-one." She smirked.

"I'm growing!" I protested. "I wouldn't brag, Ms. Four-Inches-Taller!"

"Yeah, 'taller'. That's the operative word, there, Haddock."

"Whatever," I replied as she went back to her cards.

"Flirting," she tried.

"Uh…awkward," I replied.

She gave me a weird look and I shrugged at her.

"Adolescent," I tried.

"I don't know. Kid." She glanced down at her cards, set the most recent one aside and read off the next one. "Dad."

_Fear. _I could feel my muscles tense up as that word came to mind. "I don't know," I shrugged. "Mine, I guess."

I was getting better at lying to her. But the better I got at lying to her, the harder it was to distance myself from her and Toothless. They were being nice to me. They hadn't yet been mean. Maybe they were waiting a little while for me to let my guard down, though.

"Heartbroken," I said.

"Break-up." She replied. "Argument?"

"Fight," I said, looking down at my own cards, reading out the next word. "Love."

I saw her glance down at a card and play with it for a second. "I don't know. I guess…bliss. Summer. Beaches. I don't know." She looked at her own. "Drunken?"

"Dad."

When I realized what I'd said, I covered my mouth with my hand, but the damage was done. It had slipped out, it was out there, hanging in the air, awaiting her response. Please don't let her make a connection. Please, please, please don't let her make a connection.

My paranoid thoughts whirled around inside my brain, causing my heart to beat too fast, my thoughts to become too jumbled and sweat to run down my face.

It felt like hours before she finally responded, even though I know it was only a few minutes. "Okay," she whispered, more to herself than to me. She was giving me this strange look, though, this look I decided right off the bat that I didn't like. "Hiccup, does your dad drink or something? Cuz' you look like you've seen a ghost!" She laughed lightly, batting me on the shoulder. Her laughter shook a little towards the end as she realized I still wasn't speaking.

I was about to reply with an angry, defensive comeback when a little voice in my head warned me. _Wait. Think about this. _

If I acted like I was angry or defensive, she would know I was lying. I had to be careful. I had to keep my head. And I had to be calm. Very calm. "Don't they all?" I gave a laugh myself, though mine threatened to turn to tears. "Yeah. He drinks a little every few years, but normally he stays off it."

She kept giving me her confused look, so I made up another lie. "Last time he drank, he had a friend over and got drunk. He's this, like, really happy, jovial drunk and the memory came back to me when I heard the word." I shrugged. "I didn't mean to act so weird about it."

"Oh. Okay." She shrugged. "Your turn."

"Uh, right. Okay…pencil."

"Schoolwork." She said back, checking hers. "Hairbrush."

"Blue." I said. At her look again, I added, "My mom used to have this blue hairbrush." That part was true.

"Okay…your turn."

"Circle."

"Shape."

"_Very_ original."

"Shut up, Hiccup. Don't be a twit."

"Hey, all I said was—

"Don't care," she countered, though her teasing smile let me know she wasn't taking this banter seriously. "You're still being a twit. Um…okay…story?"

"Book," I responded. "Bullying?"

"Jerks," she replied, shuffling her cards. "Beautiful?"

"Oh…I don't know. You."

"Wow. Thanks." I could hear a smile in her voice. Feeling myself redden, I began to speak again, but before I could, the bell rang.

"What's your next class?" she asked, back to her brisk self.

"History," I replied. "Yours?"

"Biology," she said, shouldering her backpack and offering me mine. "How do you carry that thing, Hiccup? It's bigger than you are! And I bet it weighs more, too."

I smiled reluctantly. "Hey, shut up. It's not my fault we have a weakling in our midst."

"You're smaller than me," she replied.

"You can't tell." I responded.

"Kid, I could break you over one knee," she replied as we followed the tide of students into the hall. She began heading for the biology classroom but not before calling, "See you at lunch!"

"If I don't see you first," I replied, feeling my lips quirk up into a smile. I couldn't believe I'd just sat through a class with the prettiest girl in school and enjoyed it.


	11. Out of My Skin

**A/N: Chapter 11: Out of My Skin**

**Um...here's chapter 11. It's called "Out of My Skin". Moving forward a bit more with the whole friendship thing but things might speed up a little in Chapter 13, okay? Just...be prepared.**

**And thank you guys! 99 reviews! Wow! xD Thank you all! I'm one away from a hundred! I mean, the big one-zero-zero kind of lost its glow after the second story it happened to, but it's still pretty impressive, right? :) It's turning out to be more a story of the power of friendship, really. And that's what the movie itself teaches, so my story's message can't be all bad, right? :) **

* * *

We sat at the lunch table, just the three of us plus Ruffnut, Astrid's friend.

"So, let me see if I can keep these nerds straight," Ruffnut said. "That one's Toothless…" she pointed at him and he briefly looked up from his half of his sandwich to nod. "And this one's, uh…Henry?"

I could feel a smile spreading across my face. "Wrong."

"He's Hic—

"No hints! No hints!" Ruffnut cried dramatically, waving her arms around. "I want to get Cute Boy's name myself!"

The smile dropped off my face and I blushed, the half of the sandwich Toothless gave me slipping from my fingers. I'd made the mistake of starting to eat it again.

"Alright, fine!" Astrid sighed. "You were right with H."

"Just wrong with E, N, R, and Y," Toothless added.

There was a silence as Ruffnut struggled to think of all the 'H' names. "Uh…H…H…" she looked at Astrid and sighed. "What's the next letter?"

Astrid smirked. "I."

"Ugh!" Ruffnut sighed. "You know what? I give up."

"It's Hiccup," I told her. I took another bite of the sandwich, realizing it was the second-to-last bite. I'd eaten it by instinct, because it was there and I was hungry.

_Oh, what the heck? _

I took the last bite and waited as Ruffnut gave me a skeptical glance. "That's a pretty weird name."

"Yeah, it sounds kind of Old Norse," Astrid added.

"Or bodily function," Ruffnut replied.

"Yuk it up, girls," I told them, not amused. "It is Old Norse. And…I think it's also Icelandic."

"For what?" Ruffnut snorted, pushing her hair out of her eyes and popping a tater tot from the school lunch in her mouth.

"For 'strapping hero'," I replied, feeling my face beginning to redden.

Ruffnut choked over her tea.

"I could be a strapping hero if I wanted to be!" I said, stung. "I just don't want to be!"

Astrid thumped Ruffnut on the back and Ruffnut coughed and glanced up at me, swiping at her watering eyes. Whether they were tears of laughter or tears from choking, I'll never know.

I suddenly felt my stomach churning.

_Uh-oh._

I got up. "I'll be right back."

I barely made it into a bathroom stall before I vomited. The acidic mixture burned my throat and I coughed, leaning against the hard green wall.

For a second, I wondered why I'd vomited that way and then the answer came to me: because I'd been careless. Because I'd eaten Toothless' food without thinking about it and my body wasn't used to eating something between supper and breakfast. My stomach didn't even realize it was empty anymore.

I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and stood, feeling unsteady on my feet. I hit the flusher and unlocked the door.

I glanced into the cracked mirror above the sink before letting my eyes fall back to the ground.

Why was it that no matter who I was with, I always found myself completely, totally alone?


	12. Know-It-All

**A/N: Chapter 12: Know-it-all**

**Um, wow. Angst. It just got kind of thrown in there. This is what happens when Hiccup's determined to have angst and I gave him and Astrid and Toothless and Ruffnut fluffy scenes, okay? This right here! **

* * *

"And can anybody tell me what the commutative property is?"

I raised my hand.

"Yes, Mr. Haddock?" Mr. Wallenby fixed his gaze on me.

"The commutative property states that changing the order of a mathematic equation makes no difference," I said. "The end result won't be changed."

I thought Mr. Wallenby said something to me after that, but I couldn't be sure because my ears were suddenly filled with the sound of whispering and sniggers.

"Look, the little overachiever's being perfect again!"

"What a know-it-all."

"God, he's such a dork."

"Does he even have a life?"

"Please. You mean outside the textbooks?"

I could feel my face beginning to burn. I regretted ever putting up my hand. I slowly dropped my gaze to my desk, staring very hard at the 'P + S' carved into my desktop.

"That will do," Mr. Wallenby said sharply, silencing the whisperers. "Now the commutative property only applies to two things: addition and multiplication. Remember that. _It only applies to two things_. Now what does it apply to?"

"Two things," the rest of the class repeated in a bored voice.

"And what are those two things?" he demanded.

"Multiplication and addition," the class replied.

I absently doodled in my school notebook as he talked.

"Now can anybody tell me what the associative property is?"

_The way that the numbers are displayed doesn't matter. The end result will still be the same. _

"Anyone?" his eyes swept the class.

"Mr. Haddock?" he said. "Would you like to say something for us?"

The teacher always called on the ones who answered another question correctly. It never failed. I sat up and looked at him. "Um…the way that…that numbers are grouped or displayed doesn't matter. The end result will still be the same."

"And can anybody tell me what kind of math this works with?"

A few more hands showed themselves and Mr. Wallenby called on them instead.

I breathed a little sigh, focusing on my desk again, feeling the heat of the blush from my cheeks leave my face. I didn't know why I'd thought raising my hand and showing off like that would be a good idea, but I had. So I'd done it. And now it was just getting me something else I didn't want: attention.

I didn't like attention that much, even the good kind; but the bad kind was positively mortifying to me.

I put my head on my desk and covered it with my arms, wondering if Dad was home today.

When the bell rang, I stood up to leave before I was stopped by Mr. Wallenby's voice. "Mr. Haddock? Would you stay behind for a moment, please?"

There was a rowdy chorus of 'ooohs' from the less mature members of the class as they filed out.

Tuffnut Thorston and Snotlout stuck around, hurriedly whispering. "Probably to congratulate him on being the perfect student," sneered Snotlout.

I could feel the waves of shame and humiliation. Maybe, if he'd said it those words in a joking manner, I wouldn't have cared. I would have been utterly unsurprised that somebody else called me a perfect student, because that was what I tried so hard to be.

But he said it sneeringly, angrily, like he wanted me to be embarrassed. So I was.

I dropped my head and avoided eye contact with everybody else until they were gone and Mr. Wallenby had shut the door with a snap.

"Hiccup?" His voice was far from the crisp, clear tone he used in class. Now it was surprisingly gentle and he sounded concerned.

I slowly lifted my head and looked at him, trying to be respectful with my next choice of words. "Sir, I have to get to my next class."

"I'll give you a pass," he replied. "I wanted to talk to you."

"Um…okay." _Did I get a bad grade? Did I screw up? _"Um…sir, what—what did I do wrong?"

"Nothing," he said, sitting down in the chair behind his desk and seating himself properly. "That's the thing. You're doing everything right."

Wow.

I'd never once heard anybody tell me that before. I could feel a flush warming my cheeks, a kind of embarrassed pleasure flowing through me. "Th-thank you."

"But I'm concerned," he continued, choosing his words carefully. "You don't seem to be enjoying your studies. For awhile, that kind of puzzled me, because you seem to be one of the few students who enjoys school." He gave a wry chuckle.

Mr. Wallenby was amazingly perceptive.

"Well, I do," I admitted. "Mostly."

"Which brings me to my next point," he said. "Our school has a zero-tolerance policy for bullying."

"I'm—I'm not sure what you mean, sir," I stuttered, heart beginning to beat a little faster.

"I daresay you heard the kids," he looked genuinely concerned now, sad brown eyes gazing at me, raking over me and I wondered if he was judging me or not, "and I want you to ignore them, alright?"

"A-alright." I replied, surprised into stuttering again. "I…uh…um…okay." I wasn't sure what to say, so I just kind of stood there.

"They're just kids," he continued. "They're gonna do what they're gonna do. But if I hear them saying anything again, anything about anyone else that sounds like a put-down, I will not hesitate to report them to the office. I suspect you've heard of verbal bullying and what happened today in class was a fine example. As no physical violence was involved, however, I doubt that the school would be able to do much about them. As far as I know, that was a first time offense. Have they ever done anything else to you? Especially anything physical?"

"Um…" What could I have done? I had to lie. I couldn't tell the truth. I deserved what they did to me, what they said. I deserved it. I hesitated for a long minute and his brow wrinkled, a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth.

"You don't have to lie."

"No," I replied at last. I couldn't tell him. It'd just get worse and worse and worse. I couldn't. I just couldn't. "They've never gotten physical. And they've never done anything before that."

_Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie._

"They're just jealous of you," he told me.

I nodded, unsure what else to say. "Um…" I was acutely aware of hearing bells ringing from other classrooms. I would've been frustrated that I was going to be late if I wasn't so surprised that he called me back to give me a pep talk about Snotlout and Tuffnut, people whom I could already take.

I could handle them. I just couldn't handle concerned adults. I couldn't handle people like Astrid and Toothless and Ruffnut, people who acted nice to me, because if they were nice to me, then they deserved the truth, they deserved the real me, right? Only I couldn't show them the real me, because it was buried too deeply. I couldn't tell them the truth, because my dad needed me to keep a secret.

"You may go," he said at last and so I stood and began walking to the door.

"If you ever have any problems with them, tell me or another adult here in the school," Mr. Wallenby added. "Understand?"

"Yeah." I nodded at him and walked out.


	13. Skyscraper

**A/N: Chapter 13: Skyscraper**

**Um...yeah...just read...I know it's dramatic...**

**Also, don't ask why I decided to throw 'Skyscraper' by Demi Lavato in there. I don't really like her that much, but she can sing pretty well, so I listen to a few of her songs and I realized this one reminded me of Hiccup from Overachiever. Or...huge chunks of it did.**

* * *

My dad and Snotlout and the other bullies seemed so far away today in the lunchroom, at our table with Toothless and Astrid and Ruffnut laughing about who-knows-what, but it was clear they were just happy to be there.

I wished I could be that happy.

Astrid clicked a button on her phone. "I vote we play music while we eat."

"Why?" Toothless challenged, shoving half his sandwich towards me once again. I picked it up and took a small bite, promising myself I wouldn't eat it all so I wouldn't vomit again.

"Because I want to, dipstick," Astrid retorted smoothly, laying her phone down on the grimy tabletop and turning the volume up. "Besides, this song has been running through my head, like, all day."

"Whatever," Toothless shrugged, going back to his food.

A soft song started playing, one I was barely paying attention to, because our last conversation immediately started up again once the music was playing.

"Oh, man," Toothless groaned, "this song is lame."

"What's wrong with it?" Astrid demanded, crossing her arms and leaning back on the bench. I tilted my head to hear the lyrics better, to see what made Toothless classify it as "lame".

_Skies are crying,_

_I am watching,_

_Catching teardrops in my hands. _

"The girl sounds like she's having a heart attack," Toothless declared, scooting back on the bench and picking up his lunch sack. "I'm going to go throw this away and try not to lose brain cells from that horrible song."

"It's not so bad," Ruffnut shrugged. Astrid threw her an annoyed look.

"Ruffnut…"

"What?"

"You're my friend, you're supposed to be on my side…"

I smiled a little at hearing the now-familiar sound of Astrid and Toothless bickering. They just didn't get along well.

The song's tune began rising a little, bringing my attention back to it.

_Do you have to,_

_Make me feel like,_

_There's nothing left of me? _

The words made me stop and think for a second and by that point, I'd heard the next line.

_You can take everything I have,_

I thought of Snotlout and the others in class, making fun of me, calling me 'the overachiever' 'the perfect student' 'the golden boy'.

_You can break everything I am._

I thought of the last time Dad hit me.

_Like I'm made of glass._

I was made of glass.

_Like I'm made of paper._

I was made of paper.

_Go on and try to tear me down,_

Please don't tear me down anymore. I'm tired of hurting. Please make it stop.

_I will be rising from the ground,_

No. I wouldn't be. I was too weak to rise from the ashes. I'd lay in the fire and burn forever.

_Like a skyscraper,_

_Like a skyscraper._

The second verse began, but I was tuning out by now, struggling to make myself think of other things, other places, other people.

Please don't tear me down. I'm tired. I'm tired of hurting. Just let me rest.

I stood up and walked to the bathroom, telling the others I'd be right back. When I made it in there, I didn't go into one of the stalls and barf my guts out, like I did last time. I didn't even go into a stall. I leaned against a chipped sink, staring at myself in the cracked mirror, feeling tears start to build.

That stupid song kept replaying in my head.

_Do you have to make me feel like there's nothing left of me? _

They did have to. They always had to. I was tired. I was tired of taking it, of deserving it. I was tired of being alone.

I wanted those people at the lunch table to know me. To see me. The real me, not this stupid little replica I give everyone else. I didn't want them to know every inch of my mask. I wanted them to know me. I wanted somebody to see me just the way I was right then, gazing sadly into the mirror, on the verge of tears, even though a school bathroom was probably the worst place to cry.

_You can take everything I have._

I wanted them to accept me for who I was, good and bad, deserving of my dad's beatings or not. I just wanted someone.

I could feel the tears brimming up again and this time, I made no move to stop them as they overflowed and ran down my cheeks. I just stared into the mirror at myself, nose red, face wet and everything about me a mess.

I rolled up the sleeves of my shirt, grabbing paper towels and wiping frantically at my face, trying to destroy all evidence of tears.

I was tired of being alone. I wished somebody would see me cry, comfort me even, though I knew I didn't deserve it.

I sank down on the tiled floor, my head in my hands, until I heard the door swing open.

I didn't look up, not until I heard the voice.

"Hiccup? Are you okay?"

"Go away, Toothless," I whispered, wiping my eyes. "Please just go."

I heard a sad, soft sigh and then the door swinging open and shut and all was silent for a few minutes. But I heard breathing. Lifting my head, I saw Toothless staring at me like he'd never seen me before, one hand still clutched tightly on the silver handle. "Hiccup?" he croaked, looking at me in abject horror.

"What?" I demanded, following his gaze. He was staring at the purple and blue bruise stretching from my wrist almost to my elbow, which had been darkening steadily since I received it yesterday. My heart jumped into my throat, beating too fast.

He knelt down next to me, and gently tugged on my arm, examining the bruise.

"Toothless," I mumbled. "The floor…it's dirty…and it's nothing, I'm a k-klutz, I tripped going downstairs—

"You're on the floor," Toothless pointed out. "And you couldn't have gotten this on the stairs, unless the stairs reached out and grabbed you down. Look." He pointed to the finger marks within the bruise, so clumsily hidden for so long, so easily discovered now. "I know what I saw the first day I sat at your table," he whispered. "I know it was a bruise. And I know people don't get bruises like that by tripping down the stairs. What are you hiding, Hiccup?"

I flinched back from him, scrambling away, yanking my arm out of his grip, rolling the sleeve down, heart beating too fast. "N-nothing," I whispered, fear giving my voice a lower volume. "I…I don't know what you're talking about. I tripped."

He gave me a long, searching look. "I'm not stupid."

"I know you're not," I replied quietly, not daring to meet his gaze as he stood. "I—I'm telling the truth, I swear."

"You don't have any siblings, do you, Hiccup?" he asked.

The question surprised me. "N-no. I don't."

The subject change made me hopeful. Stupid as it was, I literally thought he was going to forget about it.

"Yeah. Hmm." He nodded. "What about your parents? What do they do for work?"

I shrugged. "My mom's dead," I whispered. "And my dad does odd jobs, I think."

"Yeah." He nodded again, getting up and pacing for a few minutes before sitting back down. "When's he normally home?"

I was beginning to catch onto his game. He just wanted me to talk until I spilled the beans about the bruise. His thinking was going the right way, that I'd gotten it at home, from a parent, but I wasn't going to tell him anything.

He was getting nothing from me.

I narrowed my eyes and glared at him. "I don't know why I'm being treated like this. I don't have anything to hide!"

"Being treated like what?" he asked, crossing his arms and leaning against one of the stall doors.

The door swung open and a boy walked in alone, but stopped at the sight of us, kneeling on the floor.

"Do you mind?" Toothless demanded, turning on him. "We're trying to have a conversation here!"

"Yeah…I'll just…go…use the other one." And with that, that boy high-tailed it out of there.

"Being treated like what?" Toothless repeated, turning back to me. He looked angry now. His dark green eyes shone with fury and…something else, something I couldn't define.  
I was angry, too. Just because he's been giving me his food and sitting with me every lunch hour, does NOT give him the right to pry into my personal life. It just doesn't. Didn't he get that I _deserved _this? I deserved the bruise on my arm. I couldn't tell him that my dad had given it to me.

I lowered my eyes to the grimy, wet bathroom floor. "Can't we just drop this, please?"

"Oh, no, Hiccup," he said. He gave a wry laugh, but his face was devoid of humor. "I'd like to see you explain this one."

"I already did!" I yelled at him. "I told you, didn't I? I tripped on the stairs!"

"Yeah, well, you had finger marks from 'tripping down the stairs'!" he put air quotes around the last four words, practically spitting with fury at me. "Explain that!"

"Fine!" I yelled. "When I fell down, my dad was on the landing and he reached out to try and stop me! He grabbed at me so hard that it left a mark, are you happy?"

"Well, I would be, if any of your pathetic excuses added up!" he yelled back and I could see his hands were shaking very slightly. He controlled himself, though I could see the effort it took in the way he clenched his jaw. But when he next spoke, his voice was surprisingly calm. "I don't want you to be with somebody who mistreats you."

"He doesn't," I replied quickly. At Toothless' suspicious look, I gabbled out my next words, determined to get him before he thought otherwise. "I swear. That's what the finger marks came from. I didn't even notice them until you pointed them out."

I was horrible. I felt disgusting and awful and guilty, lying to somebody who genuinely seemed to want the best for me.

But I couldn't tell him the truth.

"I promise," I whispered, "I wouldn't lie to you."

"Okay," he nodded a little. He still didn't look entirely satisfied. "But do you promise…" he continued, kneeling down next to me again, "that if one day I'm right and your bruises do come from home – and not by accident – will you tell me? Or somebody else?"

"Of course," I replied. The lie slid off my tongue so easily. And I hated myself for it. I hated myself for the lie and I hated myself for the truth.


	14. Trusting A Liar

**A/N: Chapter 14: Trusting A Liar **

**Um. Angst. Toothless had some of his own angst right here. But Hiccup had some, too, so maybe it all evens out. Like, seriously, I don't even know what this chapter accomplishes. I just know it gives Hiccup some time to have angst xD **

* * *

When school let out, I began walking home before I heard Toothless.

"Hey, Hiccup!" he called. He caught up with me and before I knew it, Ruffnut and Astrid were walking with us, too.

"Hey, guys," I said, trying to be enthusiastic, but the look Toothless was giving me kept me from fully enjoying their company.

"Hey," Ruffnut nodded.

"Aren't you guys getting your parents to take you home or aren't you guys taking the bus?" I asked them.

Toothless shrugged, finally taking his eyes off me and flicking them around the group instead, a fact for which I was very grateful. "Nah. My uncle has to work, so he can't pick me up."

"Your uncle?" Astrid and I asked at exactly the same time. She smiled at me when she heard me saying it, too, and then she turned back to Toothless. "What about your mom and dad?"

Toothless shrugged again.

Astrid, Ruffnut and I exchanged glances, but Ruffnut gracefully changed the subject. "Anyway," she said, "my mom's working, too, and I hate the bus."

"Yeah, my mom had to take my sister to her doctor's appointment," Astrid explained, fiddling with her braid. "And, like Ruffnut, I hate the bus." She wrinkled her nose. "So, basically, I'm stuck. What about you, Hiccup?"

"Uh…" I hesitated for a fraction of a second too long. Toothless threw me a piercing look. "Dad has to work," I managed, carefully not looking at him. "And I can never seem to catch that stupid bus."

Astrid and Ruffnut both laughed.

"Hey," I said in mock annoyance, "at least I'm not like you two, who think you're too good for the bus."

"Hey!" Astrid snapped, a playful smile lighting up her features. "Excuse me? At least I can catch up to the thing!"

"Shut up," I told her.

Ruffnut was the first to leave us at Redbrick Road, turning the corner and waving goodbye. "I'll see you guys tomorrow, then?" she called, before running up her street and into her house.

Astrid stopped at Montrose Lane. "Well, this is my stop," she said, turning to look at the neat brick houses lining the street. "See you guys at lunch tomorrow?"

"Of course," Toothless replied.

I nodded in response and Astrid went up the sidewalk.

Toothless and I kept walking, but everything was silent. I couldn't stop thinking of what happened today, when he saw the bruise.

Was he thinking about that, too?

Desperate to get him talking and thinking about something else, I started in. "So…your uncle, huh? I thought you lived with your mom."

"No," Toothless said quietly, eyes fixed on the toes of his black Converse sneakers. "I live with my aunt and uncle."

There was another silence.

"Would you tell me the truth if I asked you why?"

"Of course I would," Toothless replied, raising his head and glaring at me for a few seconds. "I'm not you, remember?"

I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood. "I—I don't lie."

There was no conviction in my voice.

"Yeah," Toothless said at last. "Sure." He kept walking, leaving me behind, just like everybody else.

I walked faster to catch up with him. "Toothless. Wait."

"What?" he asked. "You expect me to honestly believe those lies you were spewing me in school? No. I don't believe you, Hiccup. So give me one good reason why I ought to let you in about anything when you're so determined to keep me out."

I felt like he'd just smacked me. I swallowed, trying to think of what else to say. "I…I…"

"I'm just tired, Hiccup," he continued. He clearly didn't need me to respond to carry on what he was saying. "I just wish you'd tell me the truth. I've got to tell somebody about this."

"_There's nothing going on!"_ I insisted in a half-shout, half-whisper. I didn't want any nosy people to hear. "Why don't you believe me?!"

"Because," Toothless replied slowly, eyes never leaving my face, "who can trust a liar?"


	15. No, Hiccup, It's Not Your Fault

**A/N: Chapter 15: No, Hiccup, it's not your fault.**

**Uh, yeah D: IDK where this came from. I've had this idea in my head for quite a long time. The italic paragraph indicates what Hiccup remembers of his and Toothless' conversation, so I'm going to put some lines there to separate it from the rest. **

**Furthermore, I'm REALLY REALLY SORRY THAT IT'S SO SHORT. I meant to make it longer, but this led to that, and that led to a short chapter and I'm sorry! You're all very beautiful people and thank you for your reviews and I'm terrible for waiting this long and then posting a chapter that's less than six hundred words, but please just enjoy the chapter and wait patiently for the next one? The next one is kinda the official climax, but that was what I wanted Chapter 13 to be and then Chapter 14 and this one became the set-up, so I'm sorry :P**

* * *

I couldn't get my mind off what Toothless had said.

Maybe it was because it was the first time I'd ever heard the words. Or maybe it was because my mind was capable of generating the most inappropriate thoughts at the most inappropriate times and so Toothless' words haven't deserted me, the way everything else has, the way they eventually will.

And this was certainly an inappropriate time to think like that, with my dad's fists hammering down upon my body and I was curled up in the living room floor just trying to protect myself.

And I was trying to think of what I did wrong, what I'd done to earn myself another beating when Toothless' words came back to me. He had spoken them patiently, quietly, like somebody who hadn't yet grown tired of me.

I'd been trying to convince him that the bruises weren't anything, that my dad didn't hit me and I could tell he didn't believe me.

Finally, I blurted out something completely stupid, something I should've known better than to say.

* * *

_I told him, "No, it's okay, really. He only hits me when he's drunk."_

_At Toothless' wide-eyed look, I realized my mistake and hastily attempted to correct it, never knowing I was only making it worse. "No, it's okay," I explained soothingly. "It's my fault. I deserve it."_

_This really made Toothless stop. And if I had thought his eyes were wide before, well, they were nothing to what I saw now. But he blinked away his horrified surprise and, just before he turned to walk away, he said something in the gentlest tone I can remember ever hearing. "No, Hiccup. It's not your fault."_

* * *

He'd turned and walked away then, clearly not wanting to walk with me anymore, because he just disappeared in between the trees, walking towards his own home.

I gritted my teeth when I remembered what I'd said. How stupid did that make me? Openly telling him something like that in the hopes that he'd understand? Of course he wouldn't. No one understood. He was no better than Snotlout. He was going to tell everyone to look at me, the freak who gets beaten by his father.

These thoughts brought me sharply back to the present, alerting me to the fact that a dull ache had taken over the sharp throbs.

My dad's fists no longer struck me painful blows. Instead he stood there over me and I could almost sense him circling me, like he was searching for a new way to punish me.

What had I done wrong? My mind cried out, trying to remember. And then I realized: Toothless.

If Toothless told people, some other person might think it a bad idea for me to stay here.

I knew that people classified this as "child abuse". It just never seemed that way to me before. The way people described it, abuse was where somebody physically hurt you, purposely inflicting pain. They made abuse sound so violent and harsh and ugly and most of the time, it was.

But mine wasn't abuse, although people might try to tell me it is.

It's punishment. I deserve this.

Why couldn't anybody _get_ that?

I felt the blows beginning to hit my body again and I just sucked in a breath, closing my eyes against the pain because I knew only that this was supposed to happen, that I deserved this.

"_No, Hiccup. It's not your fault."_

And he called me a liar.


	16. Conversations On Bridges

**A/N: Chapter 16: Conversations on Bridges**

**Um. Yeah. New chapter. Longer than the last one. Enjoy! :)**

**Again, build-up to the climax, but a little longer than Chapter 15's build-up.**

* * *

I was walking along the bridge as dusk fell around me, dark blue mixing with pink in the sky, reminding me, strangely, of cotton candy.

I didn't go to school today.

Going would have meant facing Toothless.

I was done.

I was just so done.

I stopped in the middle of the bridge, gazing out at the sparkling water. I had to admit, it'd be a beautiful place to die.

Being dead surely had to be better than being alive and a screw-up, right? I swallowed, listening to the wind blowing softly around me, encouraging me.

_Jump, Hiccup._

I took a deep breath.

I heard a voice. "Hiccup!"

At least, I think it was her voice. Something about it, the desperation, the almost pleading note in it, made me look up and see Astrid fast closing the gap between us on this deserted bridge.

"Hiccup." She said my name quieter this time, her eyes sad. She clasped her hands in front of herself, looking so different from the happy girl she was when I first knew her, when I saw her in school.

"Astrid." I lowered myself down onto the edge. "Hi."

I wasn't sure what else to say after that, so for a second, we sat in silence, but Astrid broke it.

"Hiccup," she said gently, "we need to talk."

_Uh-oh. _"About what?"

"Toothless." She said. Then she shook her head and tried again. "Your dad. You. Everything."

I felt like a block of ice had just slipped into my stomach. "Oh?"

"Yeah," she responded. "It's not good, Hiccup. Nothing is all right with it."

"Nothing's all right with what?" I asked, though I thought I knew.

"Toothless told me some stuff," she said evenly, meeting my gaze and holding it, keeping me locked right where I was. In the here and now, I couldn't run away and I couldn't lie. I felt compelled to tell the truth.

I found my voice. "He's lying, just so you know."

"Really?" Astrid asked. She looked at me skeptically for a few minutes. "And, uh…what would he have to gain by lying, exactly?"

I shrugged. "Search me."

"And would you like to tell me how you know he was lying?"

"Because I know that it isn't true, I'd know it better than he would—

She locked eyes with me again, not once looking away. I didn't even know if she blinked that whole time we stared at each other. "How would you know what he told me? All I said was that he told me some stuff."

"Astrid—

"No, Hiccup. I want you to listen to me, alright?"

"Alright." I whispered.

"I just wish I hadn't been so stupid," she told me. There was a long silence, one I felt I had to break, so I said the most obvious thing.

"You're not stupid."

She smiled a little, shaking out her long blonde hair. "Obviously, I am," she replied. "You want to know why? Because I didn't see it. There were millions of little clues. I always kind of regarded myself as a pretty smart girl. I get good grades, my report cards aren't too bad…but I'm still so stupid. I mean, why didn't I see it before, huh? You practically laid it all out for me, Hiccup. You told me everything."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean," she responded, although I didn't. "In homeroom that day? I said the word 'drunken'. You replied with 'dad'. And that would've been good enough for me, I could've assumed your parents were drinkers, but no – you acted like it was some big, shameful secret that your dad drank. And I let it go. You laughed it off and tried to act natural. I saw right through that little act, but I let it go. Tell me…" and here she gave a half-laugh that could've been a sob. "…was I right to do that? Or was I being an idiot?"

I bit my lip, waiting for her to continue speaking.

"These past few days, I've been seeing bruises on you," she continued quietly. "But I just didn't want to think about them, I didn't want to believe what they were really from. So I didn't. I ignored them. I was being a coward about it."

"You weren't being—

"Let me speak, Hiccup."

I nodded and shut my mouth.

"I thought that because you had really good grades, you had to be perfect in every other area of life." She shrugged, a sad smile tugging at the corners of her lips. It was then that I noticed she was almost – not quite, but almost – crying. Her smile was weak and sad, but it was still there. "You're going to hate me when this is over."

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

She shrugged noncommittally. All the non-answers were beginning to grate on my nerves.

There was a long silence as I struggled with how best to phrase what I wanted to say. If I could head Astrid off, maybe she'd be able to convince Toothless, too.

"I missed you at school today," she said finally. "You didn't sit with us at lunch. I know you've been avoiding us."

"I haven't," I responded.

"People only lie to and avoid others when they have something to hide," Astrid told me, as if I didn't already know that. "You lied to me. You avoided me."

She crossed her arms, leaning back. The overcast day gave her whole being a sad, gray tinge, like she was an old, water-stained photograph.

I waited for her to speak. As I did, I caught the scent of rain in the air, realizing there was going to be a storm.

Finally, when I didn't speak, she stood. "'Bye, Hiccup."

"Wait. Astrid." I don't know why I called her back. I wanted to make things right. God, they acted like these lies were wrong, and I knew they were, I knew I was horrible and disgusting for lying to them like this, but didn't they understand? I just didn't want her to leave on bad terms. I wanted her to be okay. I was sick of her being sad. The world was already too full of sadness. I didn't want to add more, or stand there without taking a little away.

"Hiccup." She sighed, looking back at me. "What do you want?"

"I—I'm sorry, I…"

"It's fine," she said curtly, looking away. "Now goodbye." Her goodbye was so cold, icy sharp.

I stood, too, and I made to follow her, but the rain started falling, then, making it hard to see.

I wandered down the bridge, calling out for her, but after awhile, I got the hint and stopped.

I stumbled home, cold, wet and shaking, ready to face hell, right in my very own home.


	17. Ink

**A/N: Chapter 17: Ink**

**WARNINGS: I go into more detail with the abuse here AND I do warn you that Stoick is very violent here, as this is the climax and it's supposed to be kind of gory here. Um, I want everybody who gets squeamish about this kind of thing to forgive me, as I normally get squeamish about abuse as well. **

**Anyway, it isn't really suicidal thoughts, but it's more like Hiccup has a momentary wish to die in this chapter, also. Real question, will he get his wish...?**

* * *

When I was writing down something for my homework the other day, I remember accidentally blotting the page.

I didn't normally use pens for schoolwork, so I drew up to the conclusion that that was why the ink blot had stuck out to me so much.

But it wasn't.

When I reached out to rub the blot away, I felt like my dad. It scared me so much that I took my hand off the mark and took a few seconds to think, to examine the ink mark and wonder what had reminded me of him so strongly it frightened me.

I was reminded of the way he treated me, the way he spoke to me.

I was an ink blot on his perfect little page, small enough to wipe away with a few more blows, a few more unkind words full of rejection and carelessness.

How could he have forgotten his son lived in this house, too, that his son, the ink blot on the page, lived here, aching for affection and longing for love?

How could he have forgotten me?

I heard him before I saw him that day when I came home, dripping wet and ready to change into some dry clothes only to discover I only had one other pair of jeans that weren't too small or had holes.

I heard him that day as I pulled on my jeans, I heard his car pulling into the drive and the sound of it slamming, I heard the front door opening and when he called my name, it filled me with dread.

I slowly went downstairs to find him standing there, one hand fisted around a bottle of alcohol and the other pointing in my direction, face screwed up in anger. "What. Happened?" He spat.

"What do you mean?" I asked nervously, feeling my hands tighten. Everything in me was tight and scared. I could feel the danger mounting and knew to speak carefully.

"You know what I mean," he snarled, taking a few steps closer to the flight of stairs and jerking me off the third step from the bottom by my shirt. He threw me down onto the ground and towered over me, leaving me to scramble up and wait, my hands tightening a little more, trying to decide what to say when he spoke for me. "Why weren't you in school today? I got a call from the school. They told me you weren't there all day."

"I…" How could I have explained? A sort of cold dread settled over me when I realized I couldn't. I was about to be beaten again and it was all my fault. The most I could do was tell him I was sorry. I was sorry for getting him into this mess and I was sorry for not being the son he wanted. I was sorry for causing my mother's death and I was sorry for being an accident and a disgrace to him. I was sorry for everything, for the last five years that I'd spent in a cold and lonely world, isolated from everybody through the things I'd done in the past leading me to where I was today.

I was sorry, but I couldn't take it back.

I just wanted to be worth something.

I felt my father's fists connect with my body, felt them hitting me over and over again and I curled into a ball, arms covering my head, my desire to die resurfacing, as it so often had lately.

Maybe if I lowered my arms…

I felt a kick this time, his boot drawing back and kicking me, hard, in my unprotected stomach. The impact winded me and I found myself struggling to draw breath.

_Please._

I swallowed as I felt his blows rain down on me and I felt the tears of pain slip from my eyes because he wouldn't stop kicking and punching and hitting and I couldn't breathe, I couldn't breathe, _I couldn't breathe._

I started to wonder if maybe he would kill me. Maybe he would…maybe I wouldn't have to live anymore…

_Would he even feel regret?_

The thought hit me like a slap in the face and the tears sprang to my eyes once more. I blinked them back as I felt him shoving me onto my back, rolling me over so he could get a better look at me, I guessed.

I heard his footsteps pounding on the hardwood floor of our kitchen and a part of me sighed in relief that I was not going to die today.

And so I closed my eyes but his footsteps came walking back and I opened my eyes.

Dear God. He was holding a knife. Dear God. He was holding a knife. It was an ordinary kitchen knife, but one of the sharper ones used for slicing tough meat, with the jagged-edged blade and the black handle. He held it close to my face and I could feel the cold metal, hard against my cheek and he uttered the terrible words.

"You ever tell anyone about this and I'll kill you," he whispered.

And then he dragged the knife, long and hard, into my cheek and I felt blood blossoming out, felt it dripping, like tears, off my face and into my lap and I began crying then, the salty tears only mixing with the blood and making the gash worse.

Pain was all I could feel and I could feel him faintly, metal pressing against my arm and penetrating, going under my skin, twisting, turning, being dragged back out painfully, I felt him kick me again, in the side, forcing me to roll over onto my stomach and I just lay there and sobbed, because sobbing was the only way I could express how truly terrified I was.

I had wanted to die so badly and now that I was getting my wish, I wasn't sure whether or not I really wanted to.

I felt the knife's cool metal blade against the warm skin of my back and I felt him let the blade break the skin, I felt it twisting inside, drawing blood, making me hurt and hurt and hurt and I felt every single kick and punch and cut, I felt him when he punched me in the head just hard enough for black spots to appear in my vision.

I had stopped crying now and I could still feel him, breaking skin, drawing blood thick and dark as ink, and I could feel the powerful fist, the blow to my head.

I saw blood, I saw the red liquid streaming into my eyes and I smelled it as it streaked past my nose and I tasted it as it ran into my mouth and I couldn't see with tears mixing with blood but maybe it was better sightless, because I know I would've given anything to see my dad without that knife.

I felt the sharp throbbing begin in my head as slowly, slowly, sight and sound were ripped from me and I passed out on the ground, nothing but my dad's fists and his kicks, nothing but the cool metal blade, drawing blood as thick and dark as ink.


	18. Sort of Complicated

**Chapter 18: Sort Of Complicated**

**Guys. No, seriously. I'm sorry :'( I MEANT TO MAKE IT LONGER AND GET IT UP QUICKER, OKAY?! But...well...it's just really hard, okay? Hiccup doesn't like being tortured and right now he's asking me to please give his dad a happy ending, because, for some reason, he still loves his dad. I didn't ask why. I guess because it's his dad. So he's gonna be really angry with Toothless and Astrid and Ruffnut and heck, even me.**

**So, I'm sorry to Hiccup! Who would like to review and:**

**1. Tell me how I did **

**2. Tell Hiccup it's not his fault? **

**:) you are all very beautiful people and thank you guys for all the reviews already! I never expected this many! I'm thinking of changing the summary of this story, by the way. I have ideas, but I'm not sure...do you guys think the summary needs to be changed? **

**Ack! Well, if I make this AN much longer, you guys won't even read it xD so bye! **

* * *

I woke up to low beeping noises and tense, muffled voices. I heard the creak of a door opening and then three pairs of hurried footsteps, three chairs creaking as three people sat down.

"Do you think he'll wake up anytime soon?" asked a voice I recognized. It was definitely a girl speaking, but I just couldn't place exactly who it was.

"They said he's lost a lot of blood," a boy's voice admitted. I recognized this one as well, but I still couldn't figure out the two speakers' names. I felt like I should, but I just couldn't, not with the waves of pain crashing down on me every few seconds, making it impossible to breathe.

"But he's okay, right?" the girl asked, in a higher voice than I remembered her having.

"'Course he's okay," the boy replied bracingly. "Hiccup's a tough kid, isn't he? Don't worry, Ruffnut, he'll be fine."

Dimly, through the pain, I realized Ruffnut was the girl from school, the one who'd hung around me and Toothless and Astrid.

But what was she doing here?

And…where exactly was "here"?

The last thing in the world I wanted to do was face the girl at my bedside, and if my brain's furious working was correct, then the boy was Toothless, and I didn't really want to face him right then, either.

I hesitantly opened my eyes and flicked them quickly around the room, so fast the white-washed walls blurred and I got dizzy.

I groaned, reaching up to put a hand on my head.

I struggled to think what I was doing in a hospital before Toothless' words came back to me: _"They said he's lost a lot of blood…"_

The only conclusion I could come to was that they had been talking about me, but I didn't remember losing blood at all.

All I remembered from yesterday was fear and pain and the conversation with Astrid on the bridge, and the rain soaking through my thin clothing and my dad's voice calling me and the blood as thick and dark as ink…

I groaned softly and closed my eyes again, hoping to block out the memories, but now that they had started coming, they just wouldn't stop.

I didn't want to think about how the knife's cool metal blade felt against my cheek or pressing, hard, into my leg…

My stomach twisted into a knot and I squeezed my eyes tighter, feeling hot tears build up in my eyes, tears I wouldn't shed.

The others must've heard my groaning, because they looked around at me.

"Hiccup!" Ruffnut shrieked. "Are you alright?!" Her voice, high-pitched with what I could only call fear, was already giving me a headache.

When the pain in my head finally receded, I found myself wondering why on earth she cared so much. Why should anybody care about me?

A mistake wasn't supposed to be loved.

"I'm alright," I mumbled. My tongue felt thick and heavy and everything in me was aching, reducing my voice to a low mumble that I thought she probably didn't hear.

"Oh, thank goodness," she breathed and then her fingers squeezed my hand tightly and I made a faint noise of pained protest.

She quickly released me, wincing. "Sorry, sorry."

Toothless was silent and so I struggled to open my eyes and sit up so I could see him better, but I'd barely sat up when the pain in my back and side reached its peak and I fell back with a gasp, biting my lip so hard that a few drops of blood dripped down onto my chin.

"Take it easy, Hic," Toothless whispered, "you've been through a lot and you just woke up. You won't be leaving anytime soon, anyway."

"What's going on?" I demanded, ignoring this. I had to learn to sit up and walk for myself, because I sure as heck was NOT going to let anybody help me walk. "What happened? What am I doing here?"

There was a tense silence and I saw Toothless exchanging glances with Ruffnut and Astrid, who I hadn't noticed until just now.

"Well…" Astrid began, but then she dropped her sentence, turning expectedly to Ruffnut.

"…It's…sort of complicated…" Ruffnut tried.

"You're in the hospital because of how badly injured you were when we found you," Toothless cut in suddenly and I was surprised to see that while his voice was calm, calmer than I'd ever heard it, his green eyes seemed to blaze with anger. "We're here because we're your friends, we care about you and after seeing how much blood you lost, it was impossible not to be worried. My aunt and uncle are out in the waiting room, they got here when they heard I was here. Astrid's mother and Ruffnut's dad are coming, they'll be here in a sec." He was starting to talk faster than ever now. "Aunt and uncle aren't seeing you or anything – they're here to drive me home." He scowled a little and I sensed there had been an argument about that, but I wasn't willing to hear about it right now. I felt like he knew what I'd really wanted to know and was deliberately not answering it as I had deliberately not asked it.

"That wasn't what I meant and you know it," I told him. "I meant what happened to my dad?"

Another tense silence fell and Ruffnut opened her mouth to speak, but Toothless cut smoothly in. "I didn't tell you that because I knew it'd upset you, but if you think you can take it, go right ahead and ask."

Fear clenched my heart. Was he alright? Was my dad okay? What if he was dead? What if…?

"I can take it," I said quietly. "Just please tell me what happened."

"You're gonna go to a new home, soon," Toothless began. "A foster home, probably. Your dad's awaiting a sentence in a jail cell right now. He'll survive, I promise you," he continued in a hard voice as I opened my mouth to speak.

Forgetting about the pain, I sat bolt upright, completely ignoring and not caring about the throbbing that started up everywhere when I did. "That's not the point! Why is he in a cell? He didn't do anything wrong! And I'm NOT going to a foster home, my dad's okay!"

"Hiccup," Astrid began in a quiet, sad voice. She sounded even sadder than she had on the bridge. "You can't try to fudge that. The proof is all over your body." She gestured wordlessly to my side and I tentatively pulled up my shirt, revealing the purple, blue and red bruises on my ribcage. I dropped my shirt again and glared at her.

"Let me guess," Toothless said in a bored voice, "you tripped on the stairs."

I hesitated and finally decided to just take the chance. Maybe, if they could see the truth, everything would go back to normal.

_I swear, _I thought to whoever might be listening, _if you get my dad out of this one, I will stop talking to Toothless and Astrid and Ruffnut. It was a mistake to start talking to them in the first place. If you just help my dad out of this, I will stop speaking to them. I won't hang around them anymore. I knew I never deserved them, but my dad shouldn't have to pay for what I did._

"It's my fault," I told him angrily. "I _deserve _what he does."

Ruffnut's mouth dropped open, Toothless simply looked resigned and Astrid's sad blue eyes grew even sadder.

"No, Hiccup," Toothless told me quietly. "It's _not_ your fault."


	19. A Row of X's

**Chapter 19: A Row of X's **

**AAAAAAAAAAAAANGST :D For one, thank you all! You guys made Hiccup smile, but I could tell he didn't believe half of you guys. A few of you made him blush as well, but I've never seen him look happier. If you guys join Toothless and the girls, you'll be unstoppable in convincing Hiccup it wasn't his fault :D well, here's some angst, despite the short chapter. I'll be back in chapter 20 and hopefully it'll be longer. The story was originally supposed to end at twenty chapters, but it might be more than that, it might end up being one or two longer than planned...**

**P.S: I know I made Ruffnut really weepy, but the reason for that is because Astrid was incredibly shaken when first they found Hiccup and, Toothless will hate me for this, but he flipped out in the waiting room in the space between when they found Hiccup and when he woke up. **

* * *

"You weren't in school for two days in a row. And…knowing what we know about you…I think we were all a little worried. Ruffnut didn't know anything, but Toothless and I did, and we explained a little bit of it to her and she agreed to come with us…"

I scowled as I realized Astrid had told Ruffnut something completely unnecessary. I was surprised, though, as they sat at my bedside, relating the story of how they'd found me, that Ruffnut looked close to tears.

I couldn't understand why she looked ready to cry at any second. Astrid continued in her explanation, speaking quietly. "We went around to your house, and your dad wasn't there, but we thought he must have been because of how badly hurt you looked. Ruffnut called nine-one-one, I called the police."

I listened closely until the end of their story, my stomach still churning from everything they'd told me. I wanted to vomit, I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream. I wanted to do anything that would get me away from here and back to my father.

Funny thing – when I was with him, all I wanted was for him to love me.

Now that he's gone, all I want is him to be back, empty beer bottles, raised fists and bruises and all. I'd take physical pain over what I'm feeling right now.

"We should've thought about calling the police earlier," Ruffnut confessed. "But some of us were a little…shaken." In the pause between 'little' and 'shaken', she looked pointedly at Toothless, which confused me.

Toothless, out of the three still sitting at my bedside, seemed to be the calmest out of all of them. The idea that he might have been freaking out about anything was laughable.

I didn't feel like laughing, though – not by a long shot.

"_Your dad's awaiting a sentence in a jail cell right now." _My insides went cold at the very thought. I wanted to push these people away, these people who had hurt my father, but at the same time, all I wanted was to wrap my arms around them and hold them close.

Unsure which one to do, I remained in the hospital bed, doing neither. Of course, my common sense argued with my emotions – I knew I had to leave them behind and soon, no matter how much I wanted them to stay with me.

They were going to get tired of me, and besides that, they kept trying to lie to me.

"_No, Hiccup, it's not your fault."_

It was my fault and I just wanted them to get that. I could deal with it if only they called me a freak and hit me, cast me aside or told me I was useless and worthless – but how was I supposed to deal with kindness?

How was I supposed to deal with them? Didn't they get it, didn't they get I deserved it? It was my fault.

I was stupid, I was useless, I was boring, I was a coward, I was weak, I was dishonest as the day is long, no matter how good the cause was, I was overemotional and pessimistic and an idiot.

"_Your dad's awaiting a sentence in a jail cell right now."_

And it was all my fault.

"Hiccup…" I heard Ruffnut's quiet voice, but the longer she spoke, the closer she sounded to tears. "Why didn't you _tell_ us?"

I lifted my eyes to hers, a mistake on my part. Her gray eyes were full of tears and they shone brighter than ever under the light. I wasn't sure how to respond, until the only answer I could give came to me. "It was punishment," I whispered. "I deserved it."

I didn't expect it to be Toothless, or anyone, really, to lean over and pull me into the bone-crushing hug he did, but he did. I could feel his warm hands on my painful back, and they were shaking. "No, Hiccup. It is not your fault."

I hated being touched. I wanted to be loved and hugged and touched, but I hated being loved and hugged and touched. I pulled away from him, but I found I couldn't look at anything but the hospital sheets.

Ruffnut gave a hearty sniff. "It's true, Hiccup," she said quietly. "It wasn't your fault. What could ever make you think it was?"

My throat was closing up. I didn't know if I could speak, if I could reply. I was starting to hurt worse and I was getting tired. I wanted to pull the blankets over my head and shut the world out and sleep, because in my sleep, my dad hugged me and ruffled my hair and tucked me in at night.

In my dreams, drunkenness and violence didn't exist. I hesitated for a long moment, wondering how best to phrase my reply and wondering, still wondering why they didn't believe me. "Please don't lie," I whispered at last through my closing throat. "I deserve it. I'm a mistake and I deserve to be punished."

"Hiccup—

"I shouldn't have been born," I whispered.

"Hiccup— Toothless began in a harsher voice.

"Can you please just _go away_?" I asked.

Toothless opened his mouth to protest, but Astrid beat him to it, surprising me by agreeing. "Alright. We can go. But I had a question for you first, Hiccup. Do you think you could answer it for me?"

I gave her a look, wondering what she wanted to know. "It depends," I said slowly. "What would you want to know?"

She picked up her backpack and, when she withdrew her hand again, she was clutching several pieces of paper. "What's this?"

A neat little row of X's blurred before my eyes.


	20. Real Men Don't Cry

**Chapter 20: Real Men Don't Cry**

**Er...yes. Here's chapter 20. I would like to thank everybody who reviewed, and I would like to thank hiccupp, Razzle-Pazzle-Doo-Dot, Origami-Star, and Dragon-Dude23. I'm purposely using hyphens, because FF doesn't let people address each other on here. Anyway, you four gave me AMAZING IDEAS, and RazzlePazzleDooDot's is GOING to appear next chapter...or sometime :P IDK WHEN exactly, because stuff happens. Anyway, wow, twenty whole chapters! Life rocks! xD **

**Origami Star's idea comes in here. **

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There was a long moment of hesitation from me, and I gazed around the room for several long minutes before finally admitting defeat and, carefully not looking them in the eye, I said, "It's nothing."

Toothless didn't wait; he pounced right on that without giving me a chance to continue. "You know, the longer people take to answer, the more likely it is that they're thinking up a lie."

"Oh, yeah," I retorted, feeling an unfamiliar emotion beginning to sear my insides, and heat my blood. It was an emotion I'd only ever felt when it was directed at myself. "Because it would take me ten minutes of stony silence to think up the lie, 'it's nothing'."

Toothless crossed his arms and glared at me, one eyebrow raised. His dark green eyes never once left my face and I felt like he was seeing right through me, a feeling I wasn't exactly comfortable with. I shifted a little in the bed and waited for him to speak.

Ruffnut's eyes went back and forth between the two of us, anxiously awaiting our next moves. Astrid's round blue eyes never left my face, fixed intently on me as if waiting for me to confess the truth, or maybe burst into tears.

I tightened my lips and turned expectantly to Toothless.

Finally, he shrugged and stood. "C'mon, guys."

"You're leaving?" I asked half-hopeful and half-wishing they would stay, but change the subject. I didn't want to talk about the X's. I didn't want to even think about the X's. I knew it was selfish, but I wanted them to stay with me.

When Toothless hugged me a few minutes ago, it was the first time somebody had hugged me for a really long time, and my skin still tingled from the feel of another person against it, somebody who hadn't touched me with the intent to bruise, to leave a mark.

"Well, seeing as we can't make you tell us," Toothless said, in an almost challenging tone as he picked up his backpack and glared at me defiantly. "We couldn't make you admit what your dad was doing, and we can't make you say it wasn't your fault. We can't make you tell us what the X's are about." He shrugged.

Ruffnut was starting to look near tears again and she flung her arms around me. "We'll come see you tomorrow," she gabbled in my ear, hands tight on the back of my shirt, and her hot breath on my shoulder. "We'll see you every day until you get out of here and every day we'll come back to tell you…" she trailed off, as if she was about to dissolve into tears and I hoped that she wouldn't. Just being hugged by a girl was foreign enough to me. Having to comfort said girl while she cried would be way too out there for me.

But then she picked her sentence back up again, in a stronger voice, sounding more normal. "…we'll come back to tell you it wasn't your fault, and one day, you'll believe us."

I swallowed. I wanted to pull away and shake my head and tell her no, no, no, it was my fault, but she had already pulled away and given me a sad smile.

She stepped out into the waiting room and before I could even begin to process that, Astrid leaned forward and gave me a quick hug, and then a punch on the shoulder. "We'll see you tomorrow, Hiccup." And she raced out of there, looking glad to be gone.

Toothless stood there, leaning against the wall, just watching me.

"Toothless, I…"

"Hiccup." Toothless reached over and shut the door, as if thinking a few bored nurses with nothing to do would come and try to listen in. He walked forward very quickly, leaning on my bedside. "I…" he hesitated, and stopped, looking at the floor, and so I began to speak instead.

"Those X's…" I swallowed and forced the next few words out, glancing down at the paper still clutched in my slightly trembling hand. "Toothless, the reason…Toothless…" I couldn't say anything. Nothing would come out. And then I gritted my teeth and forced the words out, as quickly as I could. "Each X represents something I've done wrong."

"What?" Toothless looked back up at me so quickly, I was sure he'd later have neck pain. He tilted his head, his green eyes curious and dark and still with that distinct tinge of anger and sadness that never, ever went away. "Is that why you wouldn't tell us?"

I nodded wordlessly, unsure if I could speak.

Toothless gave a dry laugh and resumed his seat at my bedside. I expected him to be angry, but all he did was quietly laugh for a few minutes, until the laughter died away, yet his shoulders still shook. I wanted to believe he wasn't going to suddenly burst into tears, but when he lifted his head, his eyes looked a little brighter than they normally did. He blinked and it was gone, and so I guess I must've imagined it.

"What does this page represent?" he asked quietly, and I was amazed that he wasn't calling me a freak. He wasn't angry with me.

I looked down at the page he was pointing to and realized it was dated back to 2011. "That's…" I swallowed, feeling something in me warn me to stop or I would destroy myself. "…these were added because this was the night I realized…" _Please don't leave me for this. _"…the night I realized I'd killed my mom."

Toothless' breathing quickened. "What?"

"I…I...it was my fault, I killed her," I admitted in a very small voice. "My dad told me I did. It was my fault she died."

"And you still believe him, do you?" Toothless asked, staring at me as if I was insane.

"Yes," I replied defensively.

I expected an angry retort, but all he did was shrug and peel up another page. "When did you do this one?"

I checked the date on it and then found a sudden interest in the sheets. I couldn't look at him as I mumbled out my next words, "Getting a B on a science test."

"I bet your dad told you that you had to get good grades," Toothless muttered bitterly.

"So what if he did?" I demanded, raising my head defiantly.

"Nothing," Toothless replied, but I could feel the disapproval radiating off him.

"What about this one?" he asked, gesturing to another.

I had so many X's now, I wasn't sure what these stood for, so I had to look at the date again. "Um…" I hesitated for the slightest instant, but at Toothless' gentle, probing, 'yes?' I answered, "It was because I…I realized I deserved punishment."

"Can you tell me something?" Toothless said.

I nodded nervously.

"What have you done to deserve punishment?"

The question should've made me think; I should've looked deeper than my dad's words, but I didn't. I just bit my lip nervously and I couldn't look Toothless in the eye, because the moment I did, I knew I would start crying. "I…I…" I swallowed. "My mother died."

Toothless looked frustrated, but resigned. "How?"

"What?"

"How did she die, Hiccup?"

"I…" I hesitated again and eventually decided on the truth. "It was a car accident."

"What's the operative word there?"

"Uh—

"Accident."

"Toothless—

"No, Hiccup. No. You didn't kill her."

"But I did!" I insisted, tears of frustration stinging my eyes. "It was my fault!"

"You didn't do it!" Toothless said. "You sit there and you say, 'oh, I deserve punishment' but you don't! You didn't hurt your mother in any way and your father…" he trailed off, his tone becoming bitter, his face twisting to form a sour grimace.

"Don't say anything against him!" I warned defensively. "It's my fault he's in jail right now!"

Toothless opened his mouth to retort.

There was a knock on the door and we both turned to look as Astrid entered. "Are we leaving?"

Toothless nodded and then he turned to me. "Can I have those pages?"

I clutched at the X's nervously. They were the only thing keeping me holding on. "I…I…why?"

"I won't show them to anyone," Toothless told me. "I promise. And I will give them back. I just want to see them."

Astrid slinked out the door again, the wooden panel closing behind her.

I tentatively held out the pages to him. "Please don't tell the others what they mean. Please."

"I won't," Toothless said, but he didn't sound impatient. He sounded…gentle. "I promise." He leaned over and he hugged me back again. I could hear his heartbeat, calm, slow, concerned. As if he cared.

The moment he walked out the door, I lay back and swiped furiously at my eyes, telling myself I was stronger than this and repeating the phrase my father had beaten into my head: _real men don't cry._


	21. What I Meant to Tell Him

**Chapter 21: What I Meant to Tell Him**

**Me: Huh...this chapter looks awfully short... *checks live preview and realizes I uploaded the first draft* **

**Me: CRAP! **

**XD And I did it TWICE xD **

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_He was holding a knife, an ordinary kitchen knife but with a strangely sharper blade, a more jagged edge._

_I swallowed as he held the cool metal up close to my cheek and whispered the terrible words. "If you tell anyone about this, I'll kill you."_

_Only three words stuck with me: "I'll kill you."_

"_I'm sorry!" I said my voice high-pitched with fear. "I'm sorry, Daddy!"_

_But he was digging the blade into my cheek and I couldn't do anything to stop him. I could feel the blade going under, breaking skin, twisting in my arm and drawing blood and I was so afraid that I sobbed and I cried out, "Please don't kill me, Daddy!"_

_But he took no notice. He dug the blade deeper; he turned me over so I faced him with wide, terrified eyes._

_He turned me over so he could see my face, and he slowly, slowly, pressed the knife into my chest. It cut the cloth of my shirt, it penetrated my skin, it broke it, it went under, and it drew blood…_

_I was beginning to feel sick. I wanted to vomit, or cry, or maybe both. I wanted to stop him from doing whatever it was he was about to do, because I had a feeling I wouldn't like it._

_As he withdrew my heart from my chest, that's when I realized it was a dream. I was still alive, I was still watching him examine my heart, I could see him picking up the knife and chopping my heart up in pieces, but I wasn't dead._

'Wake up,' I tried saying to myself. 'This is just a dream, it isn't real.'

But although my logical mind believed me, nothing else did.

"_Don't kill me," I whispered to him. "Please don't kill me, Daddy…"_

_Dad cast the pieces of my heart aside and I swallowed as he edged closer to me, picking up the knife again and slowly, so slowly, raising up my shirt…_

"_Don't!" I cried. "Please don't kill me!" _

"Hiccup—

"_Don't let him kill me!" _

"Hiccup, wake up—

"_P-please—_

"Hiccup, wake up! It isn't real!"

My eyes flew open and I sat bolt upright. I glanced around to see sunlight streaming in through my window and Toothless sitting at my bedside, a few papers with X's on them clutched in his hand and I understood: it was a new day and he was back again.

Now that I was fully awake, the pain was rushing back to greet me, helped along by the jerking movements I'd undoubtedly made in my sleep and my sudden movement when Toothless had woken me.

"Sorry for yelling," he said in a much calmer voice. "I had to wake you, but you weren't woken easily."

I swallowed and as I did, something warm and wet slid down my nose, landing on the sheet.

The moment I realized it was a tear, I lifted my hand to swipe at my eyes, repeating the phrase over and over: _real men don't cry._

Dad had always hated it when I'd cried. That's why I'd always tried so hard to conceal it from him whenever I had been, or whenever I was.

"Hiccup, can I ask you something?" Toothless wasn't looking at me; his dark green eyes were fixed intently on the page of X's in his hand.

I didn't reply, but he seemed to take my silence for a 'yes', because he said, "Did your dad ever threaten…or t-try to kill you?"

I was so surprised that he knew that I just stared down at the sheets for a second, but then suddenly, I lifted my eyes to him and more tears slipped out, and then a few more.

I'm not sure what came over me then.

Maybe it was the need to cry that I'd suppressed for so long, or the desire to have somebody to hold onto and talk to.

Either way, I only managed a small, broken sound that could've been a yes, or maybe a no, even I'm not sure, and then I was crying.

Salty tears dripped down my nose and slid smoothly down my cheeks and though I wiped at them and tried to get rid of them and stop shedding them, they wouldn't stop coming and so eventually, I just let it go and sobbed my heart out.

Toothless stood up from the chair and leaned over the bed railing, hugging me again, warm, gentle, calm.

"Shh," he said slowly and his hands found the top of my head, smoothing down my hair. "Shh…it's okay. It's okay. He can't hurt you. Nobody's going to hurt you. I promise."

"I'm scared," I whispered.

"I know, I know," he said quietly, and he hugged me tight, like he never planned to let go and in truth, I didn't want him to. "But you're safe now. He can't hurt you."

"He's going to hurt me again," I whimpered and then I scooted closer to him, and I hugged him back and I cried even harder because finally, somebody was watching me cry and comforting me while I did.

He wasn't hitting me for crying or calling me weak or unmanly for doing it. He was just sitting there, hugging me, so patient and kind and not leaving me and it felt nice.

"I'm tired of being hurt," I whispered. "I don't want to be hurt anymore, Toothless."

"Nobody's going to hurt you anymore, Hiccup," Toothless said in a firm voice and then he withdrew his arms from around me and lowered his head so we were eye-to-eye. "And you know why?"

I shook my head.

"Because you don't deserve to be hurt. And if anybody tries to tell you otherwise, I'll hurt them. Okay?"

My lips twitched into a weak smile at his words. "T-toothless, you don't have to do anything for me, I—

"I know," Toothless cut me off. "I know I don't have to do anything for you, Hiccup. But I want to, and I think you need me to."

I didn't answer to that, because I knew he was right.

"You're gonna be okay," he continued. "It's not your fault."

"What if it was?" I whispered, raising a tear-stained face to look at him. "What if it was my fault, what if I do deserve it?"

"If you ever think like that again, just pull these out, okay?" he handed me the X's.

I looked down at them and then glanced up at him, opening my mouth, but he turned one of them over for me, shielding the X's from view. On the back of the page, in spiky handwriting I recognized, it read, _"No, Hiccup, it's not your fault."_

I looked up at him again, tearing my eyes away from the beautiful, albeit untrue, words. "T-toothless— I stuttered, but he slowly turned another one over for me, and another, and another, and another, until I was staring at messages, all written in that spiky, messy hand.

"_Stay strong, Hiccup. You're gonna be alright."_

"_You never deserved anything, Hiccup."_

"_You don't deserve punishment."_

I wanted to tell him something; I wanted to maybe deny it, and tell him it was my fault, or maybe explain to him how much it meant to me that he'd done this for me, but I couldn't put it into words.

Instead of saying anything, I just clung to him, but by the way he gently stroked the top of my head and whispered, "You're safe, and it wasn't your fault," I think he understood what I meant to tell him anyway.


	22. Seeing Myself

**Chapter 22: Seeing Myself **

**Sorry for the long wait, everybody! Weeeeeeelllllll, here's chapter 22. Major movie callback at the end :D Also, special thanks to RazzlePazzleDooDot who drew the characters from this fanfic for me! I don't think I've ever been so happy xD Enjoy this chapter, which I wrote just because he/she had drawn something for this story! :D **

* * *

When I finally drew away from Toothless to see him looking down at me with something close to pity in his eyes, I felt a rush of boiling hot shame.

My cheeks reddened and I dropped my eyes to the hospital sheets. Even in my current state, I was at least capable of registering embarrassment and I suppose that's a step in the right direction.

"Sorry," I mumbled, extremely interested in pulling a piece of lint off the blanket, and I was about to say more when I felt his warm hand on my shoulder, going back and forth in a soothing way.

"It's okay, Hiccup," he said quietly. His voice was the gentlest thing I'd ever heard, but I was terrified if it went any softer that it would break me better than even my dad could.

And I didn't want to cry anymore.

I swiped at my damp eyes and sniffed.

"I know you're probably furious with me right now," Toothless began quietly, and I lifted my head in surprise to see that he had sat back down in his chair and was staring at the floor, lips barely moving as if he didn't want me to hear what he was saying. "But you have to understand that this was the right thing."

"Yeah, but how do you know that?" I asked. It didn't come out sounding angry, though; just weary and very, very sad.

"How do I know that?" Toothless stared at me for a long second and finally rubbed his forehead with one hand. "Well, I guess the easiest answer to that would be because I know how you feel, but I see you and Hiccup, when you're in it, it's the hardest thing in the world to see it."

"What—you?" I managed, surprised. "But you're all…" I gestured to him weakly with my hands. "You're not…"

"What?" he demanded. "You think everybody who sees me thinks, 'what an innocent little boy'?"

"No," I mumbled. "No, I don't. I think your innocence was lost long ago." I was aiming for a joking tone, but I realized I'd failed.

Toothless drew his knees up to his chest and didn't speak for a long minute.

Finally, I broke the silence. "Is that why you're so against it? Because it happened to you?"

He nodded silently. His face was expressionless, but his hands were clenched into fists, as if he was fighting down the urge to cry or punch me.

"I…I'm sorry," I blurted. "I didn't…I…I shouldn't have asked."

"No, it's okay," Toothless insisted, but he still wasn't looking at me. "I demand honesty from you, and I ought to give you the same in return, right?"

It sounded like it made sense in my head, but when I tried to apply it to the fifteen-year-old boy who looked the most shaken I had ever seen him, it sounded wrong.

He took a breath and began absently tracing a pattern on one of the bed railings. My curiosity overwhelmed my sensitivity, and what came out was, "Who was it?"

"What?" he stopped tracing for a second, looking up at me.

"Um…who…who was it that…you know what, never mind," I said quickly, shaking my head, but he raised a hand.

"No, it's okay," he repeated. "You can ask me that, if you want. You're probably the only person whose head I won't tear off for asking me something like that."

I would've laughed had I thought he was joking, but there was no trace of a smile on his face, leaving me to reluctantly conclude that he was actually being serious.

In an effort to keep him away from the subject of tearing off heads, I muttered, "Yeah, but I don't know. I just…I think I shouldn't have asked."

"His name was Anthony," Toothless said quietly. "And he drank himself dead a few days after I got away from him. He was twenty-two."

"How did you end up with a twenty-two-year-old?" I asked.

"After my parents died, I went to him," Toothless whispered. "He was my older brother and he began drinking after he realized my parents had died."

"Oh." I gave a little gasp of horrified surprise as his words sank in.

"He was the closest relative I had, before my aunt and uncle, so I was sent to live with him first." Toothless' eyes darkened. "He was…scary…when he was drunk. Violent. Angry. Mentioning anything about our family became taboo."

"I…I'm so—

"Don't you dare," Toothless interrupted in a dangerous voice, but when he lifted his head, I realized his eyes were glistening with tears. How could a boy who was about to cry still sound like he could separate my head from my body and laugh about it later? "Don't you dare tell me you're 'sorry'. I've never once told you, 'oh, you poor thing!' when you talk about your dad, so don't say that to me, alright? If I don't pity you, you're _not allowed_ to pity me."

"Uh…a-alright," I managed to stutter out, although I was a little confused as to why he seemed so angry.

He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his hoodie in a jerky fashion, as if hoping I wouldn't notice, so I pretended to be studying the sheets. "Anyway," he said, in a much calmer way than before and when I looked at him, I noticed his eyes were dry.

"That's why I get so mad at you, you know," he continued in a lighter tone. "You remind me so much of myself last year. I was pissed at the world and I expected everybody to give up on me. I thought the only thing good for me was a beating. Anytime anybody tried to talk to me, I either yelled at them or stared them down until they walked away. I treated my aunt and uncle like dirt, because I hated myself so much that I couldn't even give anybody else a chance. When I saw Snotlout smack the books out of your hands, I stopped to help you because I thought I knew you. It took me awhile, but then I realized, I did know you. I looked at you and I saw myself."


	23. AN

**Dear readers,**

**I'm very, very sorry to tell you this, but it seems unlikely that I will be posting anything again until 2014. My computer has been very temperamental lately, and I can't get a new one until 2014, and I won't be updating very much until then. I love writing and it hurts to have to be away from it for so long and to deprive my readers of some more angst, but I can't do it with a computer like mine. I hope you all understand. **

**Thank you,**

**.ryder**


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